


My Fake Girlfriend is a Vigilante?

by OxfordOctopus



Series: The Mixtape [1]
Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Alt-Power Taylor Hebert, Angst and Romance, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Tinker Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 31
Words: 148,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24184987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OxfordOctopus/pseuds/OxfordOctopus
Summary: Taylor has a loving family. She has a best friend, she gets decent grades in school, and she's doing pretty well for herself, all things aside.So, then, why is she going around at night spearing people to walls with handheld weaponry?Sophia's not sure she really wants to find out.
Relationships: Emma Barnes/Sophia Hess | Shadow Stalker, Emma Barnes/Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver, Emma Barnes/Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver/Sophia Hess | Shadow Stalker, Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver/Sophia Hess | Shadow Stalker
Series: The Mixtape [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1791544
Comments: 103
Kudos: 286





	1. NULL-TRACK 0.1

There were four of them. The guy at the front of the group was bald but hadn’t quite accepted it yet, tufts of off-brown hair curling against his nape, frail and wiry. He wore a wifebeater, which was pretty on-theme, all to show off the laundry list of intricate fascist artwork on his arms. He wore, more or less, every bit of Nazi iconography that Taylor had personally seen, from the swastika to the black sun to even the goddamn German eagle.

The others were less _open_ about it, and a fair bit younger, the youngest of which looked... well, actually, she’d seen him at Winslow not a few days ago. That’d be weird to think about, ugh. Anyway, youngest at probably fifteen, sixteen at most, and the oldest out of the three being about twenty-five, by her measure. They all wore more conventional clothing, long-sleeves for starters, though all of them had black and red as their colours.

Well, that much was to be expected, they _were_ the E88.

At the far other end of the alley she was peeking over, a girl in her mid-twenties was huddled against the far wall. She was pretty, a curly crop of black hair and warm brown skin, with big expressive eyes and a nice, stubborn set to her jaw. She was, of course, looking completely terrified out of her mind, but... well, Taylor couldn’t really blame her. Things rarely went well for pretty non-white girls cornered by the E88, and from the way they were leering at her, this didn’t really seem to be the day that would change.

Tugging at her belt, Taylor thumbed the dispenser near the back of her hip, a dart silently dropping out of the opening and into the palm of her hand. A quick glance over the syringe-like, exposed glass belly, capped at the far end with a metal stud, filled with a viscous purple-blue liquid, told her this wasn’t the greatest dart to get out of her dispenser. She’d really have to figure out a way to sort the thing, she never could remember in what order she put the darts in.

Blinking at the scream, Taylor glanced back down over the edge. Shit, they’d started to approach. She had to work on _that_ too, it wasn’t like she intentionally let herself get lost in her head but—well, she was pretty sure she had untreated ADHD or something. Not that she’d tell anyone that, no, the erratic bursts of thought were good for what she did. What she was about to do.

Flipping the dart around, holding the sharp stem between her index finger and thumb - you could poke an eye out with it, after all - Taylor slid further towards the edge, pushing herself up onto her knees. She loomed out over it, reared her arm back, and could almost imagine the little line that connected her hand to the back of the bald one’s head, though it wasn’t quite _that_ either. Perks of her powers, she supposed; better aiming could never be a downside to something.

She threw, arm flashing out in a practiced whip. The little purple vial-dart shot forward, her eyes quickly losing track of it until, with a sharp crack, it shattered across the smooth head of the chief Nazi. He squealed, a bit like a pig, only for the noise to get lost over the chemical slurry she’d injected into the vial-needle rapidly expanding into a sludge-like bloom that quickly flooded over the other three who had followed, pushing one guy onto his back, covering the left half of his body, while the other two were shortly thereafter forced to the ground as the sludge collected over their hips, hauling them down. The sludge itself was foul-smelling - she would know, considering how long it’d taken to build a working pressure chamber - and a sort of inky-black that rarely bodes well for the health of a person who was exposed to it for too long.

Eh, they could deal with it.

Tightening her fingers around the lip of the roof, Taylor pulled herself free from it, shortly dropping into a free dive. Her body-suit - well, more of a _frame_ \- clicked, little mechanical servos near her feet and legs shifting into preparatory mode as the ground rushed up to meet her. Yet, with little more than a _thud_ , she landed, the accompanying screech of the metal impact dampeners taking the blow was a bit hard on the ear, sure, but it was better than having both of her legs shatter on impact.

She had an image to keep, after all.

Taylor pulled herself into a full stand, waving towards the pretty lady at the other end. She, apparently still a bit dazed, raised her hand unthinkingly to wave back. She could work with that.

“I’ll call this in, okay?” Taylor asked, or, well, _yelled_ , mostly because she had to talk over the litany of slurs the bald one was starting to bark at her. She just hoped the sludge got into his mouth, she was pretty sure it was mildly poisonous. “You can just go, you’ve had a rough night, yeah?”

The woman staggered, then awkwardly nodded. She looked around for a few moments, almost bewildered, before stumbling forward and then to the side of Taylor, passing by while using the alley wall to support herself. A few seconds later, the woman was gone, walking down the sidewalk, her footsteps growing ever-quieter.

Taylor felt a part of herself relax, shoulders slumping back. A smile pulled over her face, though it was obscured beneath the threadbare scarf she’d thrown around her lower face all those months ago, never quite building up the nerve to just wear the domino mask, even if it would probably work well enough to hide her identity.

She lived for these moments.

Pulling at her belt, Taylor pulled the heft of one of her spears free from a loop. It was telescoping, unfolding as she pressed her thumb into one of the clicky buttons she’d added to this version. It extended out to about the normal length of a javelin, the pointed end little more than a conal piece of metal that gave it a passing resemblance to a pencil.

Turning to the bald one first, Taylor smiled apologetically at him. “You know how it is,” she said easily, maneuvering herself around so she could get just the right angle. Her weapons never worked very well as melee—good in a pinch, but prone to misfires. She’d spent hours putting these things together, and she was hardly about to waste them through some arbitrary failure that would no doubt only happen if she just tried to skewer him with it. “Gotta keep a reputation and all.”

The man’s face paled. Maybe it was the get-up, maybe it was the spear, maybe it was her voice, god only knows, there’d been a few videos on trashy websites like the Daily Sturm with her voice on it. ‘Shrike, the anti-white vigilante’; yeah, sure, buddy. She wouldn’t say she became something of a _bogeyman_ , no, that was a _biiiit_ much, but she was pretty sure she was on every single skinhead chudlord’s shitlist at this point, not that she minded all that much.

She leaned back, cocked her arm, and then threw. The javelin, with a shock of noise, exploded from the butt end, a small payload of explosive firing it forward with the same stopping power of your average high-yield compound crossbow. With a satisfying sort of wet thud, it hit, ripping the bald fucker’s body right out of the sludge she’d encased him in, pinning him to the alley wall by the heft of her spear. He started screaming, pig-squeals that drew a groan out of Taylor, one of those awful stress headaches pounding at the front of her head. Why did she always get the loud ones?

Whatever. One down, three to go. She just had to get through this, ignore the loud squealing. She could do it, he wasn’t that bad, he just kept screaming. Loudly. She could do it, she totally could, she couldn’t do it, nope, fuck this, she could not handle his fucking screaming.

Turning, Taylor ripped a fistful of the sludge off of the pile, stomped over, and slammed the sticky shit right onto his face, smearing it a few times for good measure, but avoiding his nose just to be safe. Admittedly, it took a few seconds to wipe the shit off of her good hand, and in the process, she gunked up her pants, and those would take _hours_ to fucking clean off and... and, just. No. Ruined. They fucking ruined it.

Pulling a long knife from a loop in her belt, Taylor trotted over to the oldest of the lot and flung the thing straight down, through the bone in the guy’s hip. This one, at least, just screamed for a few seconds, writhing, half-submerged in the sludge garbage around the left side of his body, before devolving into wet whimpers.

Right, right. Now onto... she wanted to say Cameron. He looked like a Cameron, a lot like one, actually. Yeah, she was getting Cameron vibes from him.

“I think I know you,” Taylor babbled thoughtlessly. It was kinda risky, but it wasn’t like she spoke to him—Emma didn’t hang out with those types of people, and Taylor only really hung out with Emma to begin with. Well, that and Sophia, on occasion. “You look kinda familiar so, ah, I’ll let you choose: right or left?”

Cameron, probably, who shared her math class... _probably_ , and who was just your everyday teenager, tried to spit on her. Well, tried, succeeded, whatever, she had to wipe his spit from her face with the hem of her sleeve, the rough fabric scratching against dry, sensitive skin. Winter kinda sucked like that.

Taylor pulled her second of five collapsable spears from her hip, letting it extend out to its full size before smiling down at the dumb piece of shit beneath her. “Both it is, then.”

* * *

Shit, shitshitshitshit. “Hey, mom!”

“ _Taylor, where are you?_ ” Mom’s voice was that sort of frigid ‘I-will-fuck-you-up-if-you-lie’ that she usually reserved for when Dad burned dinner.

Uuuuh... “Emma’s..?”

“ _No, you’re not. I had Danny check, you know, your father, who nearly had a panic attack because his daughter wasn’t in her bed when he went to wake her up this morning for the trip they were going to take to Boston. You know, the one he’s been really excited about?_ ”

Taylor glanced at her face in the mirror, reaching up with one of the few remaining unstained wet wipes to scrub at some of the blood spatter that had gotten caught beneath her ear. Ugh, it was just her fucking luck she’d managed to hit an artery, she’d even had to sit there with the dude and apply pressure and make sure he wouldn’t bleed the fuck out and then the police had been all ‘you can’t do that to people, that’s illegal’ and, really, what a fucking mess. She’d gotten away, sure, but she was _pretty_ sure she was on the PRT’s shitlist now too.

She could add Mom to that too, and probably Dad. He’d look at her like she’d just ruined his favourite coffee cup because she’d forgotten about the trip to go see the boats in Boston. She didn’t even _like_ boats, she liked projectiles and being a cape and, y’know, fuckin’ people up. Not that people knew about that last bit, or the other two bits. Really, it was a wonder how she’d kept all of those secrets, god only knows rubbing your face down for blood five minutes away from your irate parents probably isn’t in the “101 guide to teenagers” book that she’d gotten for her fifteenth birthday by a well meaning but somewhat vacant aunt by the name of Gertrude six months ago.

Ah, fuck it. In for a penny. “I was at Sophia’s.”

“ _Which._ ”

Shit. “...Hess?” That was her last name, right? Or was it Hussie? Oh fucking hell she should really just make a list for shit like this.

There was a short pause. “ _If you’re dating around again, I’d like for you to ask permission before you stay over at someone’s house like that._ ”

Oh, _oh_. So she believed she was just, y’know, having sex with people. Wow, that was almost as bad as her figuring out that she moonlighted as a hyperviolent vigilante when her back was turned, holy shit.

In the end, though...

Sure, let’s go with that. “I will. I’ll be home in a bit, is Dad still..?”

“ _You will go on that trip_ ,” Mom said, her voice regaining a little bit of that warmth. “ _Honestly, Taylor, you don’t need to sneak around about this sort of thing. I’m sure we would love to meet your partners, be they male or fe_ —”

“Yeah, not having this conversation,” she interrupted, before slamming her thumb onto the ‘end call’ button on her phone. Breathing out, Taylor reached back, pulled at some of the short curls around her head, just to be sure that nothing was bloody and icky and whatever else. Breathing out a sigh of relief, Taylor dumped the wet wipes into a pile, rummaged through her pockets for her lighter and resisting the urge to smoke - god only knows she needed _that_ added to ‘shit we’re upset at you about’ - and lit the entire damn pile on fire.

Ceramic didn’t catch easily, but even if it did, she wasn’t about to stick around to watch the public bathroom go up in flames.

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Sophia was _bored_. So, so fucking bored, like, you could not fundamentally _quantify_ the level of absolute bullshit boredom she was experiencing. Like a fucking event horzion, it swallowed up everyth—

“Shadow Stalker, _please_ pay attention,” Halberd-up-his-ass said, looking at her from where they were projecting a few images on the screen. Okay, so when had they turned on the fuckin’ slasher movie? That sure as shit wasn’t their normal weekly meetings about shitty new drug rates and Piggy’s eternal disappointment with them.

“To return to our topic at hand,” Armsmaster said, motioning back at the screen. A few images moved, taking up the majority of it, most of them of bloodied weapons obviously taken from an evidence room, alongside a few images of gangbangers with bandages. Above it all, in those glossy, PRT-issued letters, was ‘Shrike’, written in all capitals. “Shrike, vigilante. She’s been on our radar for about three months now, with up to a month before that of possible action due to varying and somewhat inconsistent reports.”

The images changed, finally showing Shrike herself. She was lanky, tall, in a vaguely familiar way that made Sophia feel a bit oddly uneasy, almost like deja vu, but like if deja vu was because you were repressing something horrible. She wore a basic body-suit with weird, clunky servos around the arms and legs, connected primarily to elbow-and-knee length gloves and boots. All across her were belts, upon which what must’ve been at least a dozen weapons were holstered, maybe even more if the weird little box on her back had something small in it. “Tinker, current threat rating is Tinker-slash-Blaster four, with a secondary Thinker rating of three due to some of the next-to-impossible shots she’s made with handheld weaponry, and with no sign of a visor or other augmentative equipment which would provide her with an aiming system.”

There was a short pause as the screen changed again, this time to another image, her arm thrown forward, spear leaving her fingers. It was fuckin’ cool, especially when she caught sight of the terrified looking Empire guy trying to dive behind a trashcan in the corner of the shot.

“We believe she specializes in handheld projectiles,” Armsmaster continued, somehow making _fucking rocket spears_ boring. “With some abilities to work afield from that, possibly to augment her ability to throw and use them. The reason why I’m bringing this up is, currently, she’s on her last strike from us before we take action against her to bring her in. Her most recent incident involved her having to stay around to ensure one of her targets didn’t bleed out because she put a rocket-propelled spear through the artery in his thigh.”

Okay, so, not the smartest thing, but still fucking kickass. God, she just wished she wasn’t stuck with the fucking Wards.

“There’s other concerns as well that leave us worried, such as her behavior towards her tar—” Armsmaster faltered as, without any warning, her phone started ringing. Sophia froze, bristling unconsciously as every fucking head in the room turned to look at her, even Assault, who had been near the door, but he looked more like he was trying really hard not to laugh. Fucker.

“Shadow Stalker,” Armsmaster said with poignant disappointment. “Do you need to answer that?”

Anything to be out of here, sure as fuck. “Yeah, s’an emergency.”

Armsmaster made the physical approximation of an eyeroll with his posture, waving dismissively at her. She was tempted to call him a fuckhead for doing it, but she was already on strike two for insubordination and she hardly needed to spend more time in a room full of kids.

Rushing to pull her phone out of her pocket and make for the door at the same time, Sophia faltered. Why the fuck was _Taylor_ calling her? Was Emma using her phone or something or—you know what, take the gift for what it is, Sophia. Clicking ‘answer’ while shooting a glare at Assault, who broke into actual cackles at her, ass, Sophia tucked the phone into the gap between her ear and her shoulder, making directly for the washroom down the hall.

“Okay Hebert, what the fuck?”

“ _I need you to pretend I slept over at your house yesterday,_ ” Hebert - Taylor, whatever, Emma was always fucking weird about that. ‘The reedy one’ said, to the background noise of... the ocean? What, was she down by the boardwalk, or more importantly, what the _fuck_ was she— “ _She thinks we’re sleeping together._ ”

“What. What the fuck, Hebert, where the fuck are you, why the fuck are you like this, and”—pushing the bathroom door open, Sophia slipped it and kicked that fucker shut before turning the lock—”what the _fuck_ is your damage?”

“ _Uhm. In order: I was out late-ish last night and wasn’t home in time for my dad to try and wake me up for a visit I didn’t want to do, I’m in Boston right now, probably undiagnosed ADHD, and also probably undiagnosed ADHD._ ”

“What the fuck are you in _Boston_ for?”

“ _The boats._ ”

What the fuck. “You like boats that much?”

“ _No, I hate them. That’s my father who likes them so much, y’know, dude who restarted the ferry, general all-around good dude, killer puppy-dog eyes and is totally thinking I’m ‘handling women’s problems in the bathroom’._ ” Hebert paused, the sound of water turning on quickly overwhelming much else, accompanied by some muffled shouting that fell away after a few seconds. “ _Sorry, gotta go, my dad’s looking for me. Anyway, if your mother asks if you’re dating me or whatever, just play along?_ ”

“What the fuck Hebert don’t you dare han—”

She hung up.

Sophia loosed a scream of confused rage and punched the wall. It hurt her more than she hurt it.

* * *

“So, you like girls.” Mom said, smiling flatly at her. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have, but considering the _giant fucking white woman in the room_ , she’d have to cope. “I didn’t know, I thought you’d just broken up with Jordan..?”

Annette Hebert, possibly a great look into what Hebert herself might look like in the distant future, she kinda stared at the two of them with this intense, probing stare. Apparently, Taylor got her height from her mother, not her father. Or well, maybe she got it from both, Sophia had neither seen nor wanted to see what Hebert’s dad looked like.

“I mean, do we really have to get into the nitty gritty?” Shit, that didn’t sound very forward. Mom just hummed, shifting in her seat, staring her down with the lazy, bored stare of a cat. Why was shit always like this, why couldn’t Mom just play along, she liked the drama just as much as someone else. It wasn’t like her mother was homophobic or anything either, just... _difficult_.

With a shrug, Mom smiled pleasantly at Annette, who relaxed noticeably beneath it, looking a bit at ease. “We’ll see.”

“Can I just, go to my room now?”

Mom spared her another glance. “No.”

Aw, shit.

Settling back into the plush of the loveseat, Sophia took another sip from her glass of water. Annette - Mrs. Hebert? - made small talk with Mom, smiling and being generous and entirely out of her element. Clearly, she’d come here expecting something different, or maybe something that might catch her daughter off guard. Which, really, would absolutely be true, if Sophia wasn’t keeping the charade up.

...Which, actually, why was she? She didn’t even like Hebert that much. She’d dropped all of this into her lap, her weirdly intense fuckin’ mother was in her house. Yeah, yeah! Fuck this. “Actually, we’re not dating.”

The two adults turned to her, Mom in particular raised an eyebrow. “You’re not?”

“Nope.” Sophia joyously popped the ‘p’ on that sucker. Fuck yeah. She was going to revel in Taylor’s despair, and also probably punch her when she next got the chance.

Mom’s eyes narrowed. “But you do hang out.”

“I mean, yeah, sometimes.”

“And you told me, before you even got home, that she stayed over.”

“Yeah, but I lied.”

Mom tutted, a low ‘tsk’. “Honey,” she said, syrupy sweet and it became all to real that she had walked _right into that fucking trap_ , oh shit. “You don’t need to hide this from me, I support _whoever_ you want to date, boys, girls, those of neither persuasion, all three, even.”

Shit, shit shit shit. Fuck. “Seriously, I was lying.”

Mom sighed, low in her throat, and even Annette looked a bit amused by her denials. Oh she was so going to fucking _kill_ Hebert, so help her she would fucking _ruin her_ —

“Taylor went through a phase like this, too, had difficulties admitting she was bisexual after her boyfriend at the time reacted... poorly to it,” Annette confessed. “Last year, got into a bunch of trouble afterwards, he was abusive, I think. You’re a nice girl, Sophia, I hope you treat her better than the last one.”

Sophia wasn’t sure what to do with that info but... well, she could kinda recall it. Hebert looking increasingly scuffed up, how she’d pulled away from Emma, how _worried_ Emma had been about that, how she hadn’t gotten jealous over that worry and how shit had just instantly and immediately returned to normal without any prior notice one day and, well, she’d fallen back into a rhythm.

Mom was looking at her with... not _knowing_ , but careful eyes. Proud ones? No, no, not _pride_ , but intensity. A bit like she was trusting her to... oh fuck even she bought it now. Fucking hell, she’d never hear the end of this.

No, no, on Monday, she was going to find Hebert and do unspeakable things to her in a place nobody could find them. When she was done, Hebert would go home and admit to lying about it to hang out with someone past her curfew or whatever and then, and _then_ , then she would get the last laugh.

Fucking perfect.

Glancing up, Sophia reflexively scowled at Mom’s smug smile. Petty bitch winning petty victories, she’d get the last laugh.


	2. NULL-TRACK 0.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor gets a drive to school, Sophia gets her life turned upside-down. No big deal.

Resting her chin on the heel of her palm, Taylor watched the scenery blur past from behind the slightly fogged-up glass in front of her. Mom had put Pat Benatar on at some point before she’d even gotten into the car, and she had managed to get through Love is a Battlefield _and_ We Belong before she started to think that, maybe, just maybe, there might be something up with her song choices.

The smell of coffee, both her cup and her mother’s, choked up the interior of the car. Dad claimed it made it impossible to drive, the way that the smell had sort of stained everything, but Taylor thought contrary to that. It smelled nice, in her opinion, familiar and comforting, the same way that her mother smelled familiar and comforting and made her calm down. She was actually pretty sure it was the only reason why she hadn’t tried to leap out of the passenger seat when We Belong had started playing during a stop at a red light and Mom had stared at her with that sort of intense, heartfelt passion she tended to exude around important topics.

Tugging her thermos from the cup holder, Taylor popped the lid and took a quick sip. Bitter, but not in a bad way. The smell was what really made coffee enjoyable, though. Smacking her lips, Taylor refastened the lid and dropped the thermos between her legs, finally turning to the elephant in the room, or in this instance her mother. “Alright, what do we need to talk about so you’ll feel like I can leave the car.”

Mom flushed awkwardly, glancing nervously at her from the corner of her eye. Winslow was approaching from a distance, perched inelegantly at the top of the sloping hill they were driving up. It was on Mom’s route to the University where she worked, though it was a bit of a detour if only because of traffic; there was another route to the University that didn’t have the congested flow of cars that Paisley Street did, which slowed her down, but not by much.

“Sophia,” she finally said after a moment of pause, the car slowing to a halt as a gaggle of teenage girls rushed across the street, decked to the nines in winter wear, their breaths blooming like fog in front of their faces. “Is a nice girl.”

Oh, _great_. “Wait, did you go and visit her?”

The flush on her mother’s face didn’t grow, but it also didn’t fade, which was telling. Her fingers tensed after a moment, almost white-knuckling against the curve of the steering wheel. “Dear,” she said, almost sounding sombre. “I... yes, I realize it was an invasion of your trust to do so, and likely Sophia’s—she hadn’t come out to her mother yet, but... after Brent, hon, I couldn’t just hope for the best.”

Taylor swallowed, feeling a little nauseated, almost carsick, as the vehicle rolled back into motion. She reached down, unfastening the top of her thermos, taking another generous sip, relishing the burn across her tongue, the interior of her mouth. “It’s okay.”

“It isn’t,” Mom sighed. “It wasn’t okay of me, I don’t know how people’s home lives are, if she had lived with less tolerant parents I could’ve just ruined her life. It wasn’t okay of me, but... I needed to, and I’m sorry for that.”

They drew in closer to Winslow, pulling into the student parking. Taylor unclasped her seatbelt, reaching into the back seats as she did to retrieve her bag. “I forgive you, Mom,” she found herself saying, looking back at her. Her mother’s face was wan, a bit tired, bags under her eyes and... maybe most distinct of all, worry in her face. She had been worried, she’d always been worried ever since they’d figured out bits and pieces about Brent, not enough for a clear picture, but enough to understand what happened in the abstract. Abuse, domestic, it wasn’t a nice topic, and she knew it had crushed them, crushed her mother.

“I’ll be safe,” she impulsively blurted. Mom relaxed a little, reached out with warm palms to cup her face, brushing fingers along the cheekbones they shared.

“I know,” she whispered, sounding hoarse. “I know you will, and I’ll always be here if you need to tell someone anything, okay? No more hiding things like that.”

If only she knew. Taylor smiled, throat a bit thick, and leaned in a bit more. Mom’s hugs were great, enveloping, but soft; there was nothing possessive about them, nothing like Brent, or even her father’s desperate hugs he’d given her after he found out. No, Mom understood that she had to let things be free, even if she was reluctant to do so. There was nothing but love there, warm, gentle, and soft.

Taylor pulled away, squawking a bit as her mother laid a kiss on her forehead. “Ew.”

Mom laughed, a bright tinkling noise that was easy on the ears. “Go on, get to school. The first day back after winter break has to count for something, you know?”

“Ugh, don’t remind me. I still have remedial work from like half the school after last year.” That relationship hadn’t been good for a lot of things, and her grades certainly hadn’t been one of them.

Mom faltered a bit but regained her balance quick enough. She wore another fragile smile, hopeful for her, for her future, for _Sophia_. She felt a pang of guilt, harsh and sharp, at the fact that she’d lied about that, that she’d functionally tricked her mom into thinking she had gotten over Brent, gotten over closeness and intimacy and being bound by something like a relationship, something that could be exploited.

She was hiding a lot, and she hated herself for it.

Pushing the car door open, Taylor hauled her backpack over her shoulder, feeling it press against the folded spear she’d hidden beneath her shirt, looped into her bra. Shutting the door with one hand while she slipped the thermos into a side pocket with the other, she smiled back at her mom, who waved once more at her before pulling back out of her parking spot and driving off towards the university, pulling out of sight just moments later.

Taylor felt her shoulder slump, energy leaving her. Shit, she needed nicotine.

Pacing over towards the side of the building, Taylor plucked one of those appealing cancer sticks from the pack she’d hidden in the inner pocket of her jacket, clamping it between her lips and cupping one hand over the other end as shit lit it. It took a few times, she’d need another lighter soon, but soon enough she was inhaling that compound mixture of tar and addiction that would likely be the thing to kill her instead of anything like retribution for her violence by the E88. She inhaled, breathed out through her nose, and relished for a time the taste of nicotine churning in her mouth.

“Hey, Tay,” Emma greeted, startling her. She glanced behind her, to where Emma was standing with a packet of gum in one hand, though at the sight of the length of her cigarette, she was quick to slip it back into her pocket. Something about the gesture still made her heart swell, just a little, not enough to give her back that energy she had in the safety of her parent’s presence, but... enough. Enough that she might make it through the school without needing another.

“Ems,” Taylor said back, trying to inject some of that energy into her voice, and managing from the way Emma almost... _relaxed_. Their friendship had gone through a rough period last year, especially into summer, before she’d come clean about Brent. She didn’t know about the powers, nobody did, nobody _had_ to, that was _hers_ , but... She knew more than anyone else did, that was for sure. Everything Brent did to her, Brent’s extended family, The Clan.

The two of them shared a smile, Emma’s a bit wider than Taylor’s. Winter break had been hard on her especially, modelling gigs lined up in such a way that meant they’d only seen one another a few times, once for the visit her family had made to the Barnes, and two other times during random periods she had off. Emma was a popular girl, after all.

Glancing back towards the school, Taylor grimaced, reminded that she went here instead of Arcadia or someplace with enough money to at least do rudimentary repairs. Winslow was a shithole. No, that wasn’t even quite it, it was _the_ shithole. Winslow was talked about by kids from other schools in the same way that Joseph’s Max Security Juvenile Penitentiary was by Winslow students: a sort of nightmarish, gang-filled box they put all the people you didn’t want living near you. It was the type of place that had horror stories thrown around about it all the time, every other kid from Arcadia thought that the teachers were also gang-affiliated, not to even begin with what Immaculata students probably thought about the cesspit.

Sucking on the last embers of her cigarette, Taylor let the bud drop from her fingers and mashed it under the heel of her chucks. Wordlessly, Emma handed her a pad of gum, which Taylor took three pieces out of and pocketed the rest, throwing the peppermint-flavoured strips into her mouth, chewing lazily.

“Your mom’s gonna find out eventually, Taylor,” Emma chided, looking oh-so-well put together in her knee-length, puffy jacket, with accompanying fur around the hood that matched the colour of her furry boots. Her hands had quickly returned to the outer pockets, clearly trying to avoid the cold, but the tiny little shudder that ran across her shoulders said that she hadn’t fully succeeded. “You can only cover up so much of the smell with gum and body spray. She’ll send you to Choices, you know that right?”

Ugh. _Choices_. It was an under-18 addiction health services program which kinda took root in Brockton a decade ago after the surge in drug trafficking started spilling over into the teenage population. It was funded, primarily, by a bunch of people who used it as a way to skimp out on taxes, and it wasn’t really all that great at what it did. Most of the time Choices was just something you had to do to avoid having a rap sheet—go to six months of therapy to avoid having to explain to an employer why you had a dime bag of weed when you were sixteen, in other words.

Emma was also right, which sucked _less_ , but still.

“I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it,” Taylor mumbled through the smack-and-chew of gum in her mouth. “I... it, it helps, okay, Emma? I can’t really explain it, but...”

Emma shifted, looking a bit uncomfortable, guilty. She shouldn’t be, but she always was. “She’ll be upset, you know?” she said, voice quiet, but not timid. “But, but uh, I get it. A little. I don’t understand the smoking, I think it’s kinda gross, but... I get that you need it.”

Meeting her eyes, Taylor felt herself relax. She could be open with Emma, comfortable, touchy-feely, even, she didn’t have to clam up or hunch her shoulders or pull away. Widening her stance a little, Taylor opened her arms and Emma was quick to slip in, wrapping her in a hug. Emma smelled faintly of peppermint, from a lotion she used, Taylor was pretty sure. It was a nice scent, and hugging her back was fun, she was soft and small and almost like something she could protect. She was nothing like Brent, nothing at all, which made the itch to get away, to have her space, a frustrating but not unexpected intrusion.

The warning bell rang behind the two of them, a long, creaking drone that itched some part of Taylor’s brain, told her the bell was probably going to break soon and they’d need to get it fixed. Shaking away the intrusive thought, Taylor disentangled herself from Emma, who smiled back up at her with slightly-flushed cheekbones, the splash of colour framing her eyes very well. She wasn’t even really jealous of that, wasn’t jealous of Emma, she was just _pretty_ , pretty in a way that Taylor liked, but only so far, only inasmuch as she was willing to extend herself.

She could probably come to like Emma like she did Brent, it wouldn’t take much, but she didn’t really want to. There wasn’t enough room left over in her chest for that, not by her estimate.

“Think we might have to run to get to Mr. Gladly’s in time?” Taylor found herself asking.

Emma laughed, bright and giggly. Taylor found a smile pulling at her lips unconsciously, more warmth, more energy spilling into her marrow. This was why Emma mattered, she didn’t need powers or station or _money_ , just being Emma helped so much more than she could ever quantify, than she could ever really get across to Emma.

Emma circled her arm into Taylor’s pulling her into her side with another laugh, and off they went.

* * *

“Hebert. Talk. Now.” Sophia’s fingers were fisted in the hem of her sweater before she could even get a running head start out of last class—English with Mrs. Bordeau.

Emma sent both of them an odd look. “Do I need to moderate a conversation?” She asked, getting a titter out of Madison, who had at some point wormed her way into Emma’s inner circle. She was harmless, mostly, if a bit... shallow. No, she was getting distracted again.

““No.”” They both said, in sync. Emma’s eyes narrowed reflexively, but apparently, their mutual agreement was enough to placate her.

“Right, well,” she pulled her jacket on in full, reaching forward to pluck the over-the-shoulder bag from her desk. Most of the classroom had left by now, eager to leave and get home and warm. Winslow was kinda leaky, meaning most people wore some of their outerwear even when in class, not that the leakiness had been fixed. Taylor was pretty sure it was a problem with the building. “I have another gig today, then an entire week off - thank god - and if I so much as hear either of you getting into trouble, so help me, I will not spare either of you.”

Sophia just grunted, taking it at face value. Taylor choked back a laugh, which, yeah. Okay. Emma could be terrifying, but not to her, not really. It was just kinda cute, and the way Emma’s ears pinkened meant she knew it too.

Sniffing, Emma turned away, walking towards the door, the gaggle of hangers-on with her. “Well, you two do your thing.”

Then she was gone, and so was everyone else. Hell, even Mrs. Bordeau had gotten out of dodge, apparently, considering Taylor couldn’t see hide nor hair of her and she was pretty damn sure the English classroom _was_ her homeroom.

A sharp yank from Sophia sent her stumbling into the wall just to her right, her shoulder and - more importantly - the part of her back where she’d hidden the telescoped spear crashing in hard, the sharp ache of metal biting into her muscle more than telling for the type of bruise she’d have to deal with.

“Okay, Hebert, _explain_.”

See, that was kinda what Taylor liked about Sophia, maybe more than she should. Sure, she was aggressive and physical and snarled but... while she could probably make surface-level comparisons to Brent, that wasn’t quite it. There was something straightforward, _honest_ , about her aggression, and... well.

Taylor kinda liked it?

Which, well, she’d unpack later. Probably.

“I was out last night,” she fibbed easily. “I wanted to hang out with someone and I just didn’t get home in time.”

Fingers tangled into the front of her sweater, tugging her forward and, although Sophia was actually shorter than her, still managing to make her lift up onto her tippy-toes. Alright, so, maybe she liked the straightforward aggression a little less when Sophia kept grabbing at her clothes.

“That’s bullshit,” Sophia said with absolute clarity, which, _fuck_ , it was. “But I don’t _really_ care why, unless you’re doing drugs, in which case, fuck off, leave Emma alone, whatever else. No, I don’t _care_ , what I care about is _your_ mom making _my_ mom think I’m fucking you.”

Sophia shook her once, probably for good measure.

“Well, thank you for covering for me?” Taylor hedged.

Another shake, this time there was a bit of a tug from her shirt. She shifted her shoulders, trying to get whatever snagged to pull away. The bra she wore was a piece of shit with those awful clamps but it was like one of the three that fit her, so she just had to cope.

“I _didn’t_. I told them you were lying and they _thought I was just embarrassed!_ ” Sophia ended in a shout, shaking her one last time, the tugging giving way with a sudden rip of relief, only for that relief to vanish as something hard, cold, and metallic fell down her back, her hips and ass not big enough to catch the thing before it slipped free of her shirt and hit the ground with a loud, loud clatter.

Both of them looked down just in time for it to fully open because apparently luck wasn’t on her side today and the thing had landed _button fucking down_ on the ground.

Sophia’s fingers left her sweater, finally letting Taylor drop back down to her heels.

“This absolutely isn’t what it looks like,” Taylor said, trying to inject confidence into her voice.

Sophia just kinda gawked. “You’re Shrike.”

...Well, she wasn’t expecting that. “Okay, so it is.”

Sophia, apparently on a similar wavelength, glanced up and squinted. “The fuck did you think I meant?”

“I don’t know, a school shooter?” Which, really, that was her major concern. The last thing she needed was a rumour that she was a school shooter to completely bring her experiences with schoolyard drama to completion.

Sophia made a slightly broken noise, somewhere between a sigh and a groan. “Fuck, _fuck_ , fucking of course this would happen.”

“Look, I’m not even that upset. You just need to keep my secret, it can’t get out that I’m, y’know, that.” Taylor quickly added, reaching out to gently pat Sophia on the side of the arm before leaning down and making a reach for her spear, one that was stopped by Sophia’s shoe stepping down on it.

“I wouldn’t out you,” she said with... well, a lot of familiarity to the topic of cape identities. Was she a groupie or something? “So, just, don’t worry. I’ll keep your damn secret, just... fuckin’, don’t try to use me like that again, we clear?”

Pressing the button, which Sophia thankfully hadn’t stepped on, Taylor watched as a javelin’s length was compacted down into something roughly the length of a television remote. “Sure thing, Sophia.”

She got a grunt in return, and a moved foot, which was a lot more valuable than Sophia’s sometimes-intelligible grunting.

Pocketing the collapsed javelin - because she wasn’t having take two of this in _this_ school, fuck that, especially if it ran the risk of Greg finding out, eugh - Taylor stumbled over to her desk, plucked her bag from it, still feeling a bit out of her element. Turning, she met eyes with Sophia, who was staring somewhat blankly at her, like she’d just had a lot of things in her life thrown out of whack. Yeah, Taylor was putting solid money on ‘cape groupie’. Never meet your heroes and all of that.

“See you tomorrow, Sophia!” She yelled, moving at a speed that was _just_ below jogging, catching sight of Mrs. Bordeau strutting up the hallway, like six feet and four inches in those foot-destroying heels of hers. How did she even _walk_ in those and—no, bad brain, she was getting distracted again. Fuck, why couldn’t her power be multi-tasking or something? Maybe then she’d have a bigger attention span.

“Fuckin’, whatever. Hebert.” Was the refrain she got back, just barely heard over the sound of her own shoes meeting the ground.

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Sophia grimaced, stretching one leg out from where she sat in the back of the PRT van. Her costume flexed against the motion, a little stuff, but not unexpectedly so from being so new. Dennis, across from her and also in that dumb costume of his, was trying _very_ hard not to look, and while she could reward him for trying, she could also spite him for being weird about it. Mentally, admittedly, physical violence pre-patrol wasn’t something she could get away with.

“ _So_ ,” Missy said over the comms, sounding as bored as Sophia felt. “ _Coming up on your fourth year in the Wards, huh?_ ”

Ugh. “Don’t remind me,” she muttered darkly. Her mother was a sly, smug bitch and it had taken her maybe three days before she’d figured out what had happened. On the upside, she had kicked Derrick out and threatened him with physical violence when Sophia had, _eugh_ , gotten... _emotional_ about the incident, but on the other hand, she had to be emotional with her mother, and she had ended up in the Wards, without even a chance to actually try to clean up the streets like she wanted to.

Still, there _were_ perks to being the Ward with the most seniority. Of course, most of those perks meant doing the leader’s job for him because he got to be the leader by _age_ instead of time spent in the Wards itself, but, hey, she only felt visceral, incandescent anger about being used like that. No big deal.

Anyway, aside from _that_ reminder, today had actually gone pretty well. She had cornered Hebert, found out she was Shrike - which, just, what a fucking thing - and had... threatened... her... to... tell... her...

Aw, fuck.

She’d forgotten. Fucking. Just. God. Damn. It.

“SHIT!”

“Language!” Four people, two on the comms, one being Dennis, and the other being the van driver, said in sync.


	3. NULL-TRACK 0.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor reminisces before she and Sophia have a talk.

Summer sat like a leaded weight over her shoulders, carrying with it the sort of stifling heat that made her hate the season as a whole. It was unyielding, that heat, refusing to go away, clinging to her like sweat-damp hair, each breath in like inhaling campfire smoke. She felt disgusting, felt _ugly_ in the way sweat clung to every article of clothing, every curly black hair, dripping down the back of her neck in salty lines.

Her shoes scuffed against the grass and dirt, and the drone of cicadas overwhelmed the background rumble of her mother’s car. Tammi, off to her right, was smiling politely and sharing small-talk with her mom, little promises about her safety, her health, none of which she would keep. They both knew the reality of the situation, there was no ambiguity, not truly.

“Okay, hon!” Mom called, drawing her gaze back in. The air wavered like a mirage near where the dirt-and-gravel road was, heat radiating from each rock. For a moment, she almost wished her mother’s car would break down, that she would be stuck here too, that there would be an excuse, an escape, and hated herself all the more for it when she felt disappointed terror at the sound of the engine chortling into gear. “Don’t get into trouble, have fun with Tammi!”

She didn’t want to. She wanted to go home, she wanted to be hugged by her mother, she wanted to be safe, wanted to know it in her bones that she was _okay_ and not at risk.

The car pulled forward, her last escape. Down the dirt road it trundled, down and down and down until the treeline swallowed it whole, turning off the path towards the long stretch of highway that led them here, to the compound.

Turning, feeling dazed, Taylor watched as Tammi took hold of her luggage, started to pull them forward. The blonde girl stared at her, didn’t glare, not really, but it was close. They weren’t acquaintances, they were too close for that, but they weren’t quite friends either. They shared the same secret, both knew the truth of things, the bruises along her arms, the rancid thoughts planted, watered and sowed by Brent.

A hand wrapped around her arm, hard enough to bruise. Brent stared back at her from her side, taller than she was, close to six feet, but not lanky like her. He was her age, the same sort of awkward teenager that most of the class was, but he’d filled out his frame unlike her, corded muscle and broad shoulders, accompanied by sandy-blonde hair and pale blue eyes, with a face flush with freckles and a sharp jawline. He smelled, ever-so-faintly, of cigarettes, and for a moment she could even remember liking the taste of nicotine on his tongue.

He pulled on her arm, hard enough that her shoulder gave a violent, pained twinge in response. “C’mon,” he said, voice so cold, distant, carrying none of that warmth that he’d pointed in her direction at the start of the year. “I’m going to introduce you to my parents.” Not a request, or a _want_ , but a command.

He kept pulling, and pulling, and pulling, she felt further away from the grip around her arm, the bruises. She felt her feet slip, the world lance up to meet her, falling through it, through the dirt that surrounded the Herren compound, down into the very core of the world. The inky black reflected her face, a broken mask of bloodied lip and blackened eyes, and it - she - screamed, wild and terrified and _lonely and broken and_ —

Taylor jolted awake, swallowing back the scream on her lips, hand reaching up to touch at her throat. Fuck, fuck—shit, fuck. Breathing was hard, coming out ragged and gasp-like, wheezes slipping out from between clenched teeth. She spread her hands out, felt the fabric beneath her palms, kneaded it like a cat and tried to remember that she was safe, to little effect.

Fucking, _shit_. Fuck.

Turning away from the gloom stretching across her ceiling, Taylor groaned as 3:11AM stared back at her from her bedside clock. Great, even better, she was awake three hours before she should’ve been. Fuck her sleep schedule, apparently, her mind decided it was time to revisit trauma and she _fucking_ wasn’t here for that.

Pushing herself up and into a sitting position, Taylor rolled some of the strain out of her shoulders, the taut muscle that brought a grimace of pain to her face as another fiery ache surfaced across the right side of her back. If it wasn’t the cigarettes that would kill her, she would place her bets on stress, considering the damage it was doing to her physical health.

For a time, she found that she could just sit there, soak in the stillness of her body, stare at the wall at the far other end of her bed. Her fingers twitched, pulsed, and her mind raced, ideas, contingencies, plans and things she needed to do, not quite an itemized list in her head but close enough that her ability to sit still and try to regain some semblance of calm was quickly overrun by the need to just do _something_ , to do anything, with her hands.

Slipping out of bed, Taylor silently walked the length of her room and locked the door with a twist of the bar. Turning back, she dropped to her knees at the side of her bed, slipping beneath it and reaching behind the pile of clothes she had been using as a cover for her other gear. She patted around, hand meeting only cold floorboards, before finally landing on one of her projects, her fingers wrapping tightly around metal that pinched and bit at her hands, not yet properly moulded into place. Pulling it out from beneath her bed, Taylor rocked herself back until she went from knees to heels to her ass, dropping the arm-length pole in her now-freed lap.

Even at a glance, it was a crude, ugly thing. It was going to be another spear, matter of fact, she’d been studying powers lately and the day before - and, yeesh, what a fucking day that was, poof went the ‘secret’ part of ‘secret identity’ - something had just _clicked_ and she’d rushed home before her Mom or Dad could get back to work on this. She was calling it, perhaps not to her own benefit, _Ahab_. In function, it looked mostly identical to her spears, and that _was_ intentional, it just had this bit of tech she’d finally figured out, finally put logic to, which upon activation would render it intangible to non-living material and _only_ non-living material.

In practice, Ahab had been originally built to try and find a way to ignore air friction. Her weapons always were built to be as aerodynamic as possible, as came with the territory of her specialty, projectiles, but you could really only do so much when it came to _dealing_ with stuff like that. Her thought process had been, when it came down to it, to just cut out physics entirely to get around the problem, and she had managed some minor success.

She had a few prototypes of Ahab which turned intangible, primarily based on Shadow Stalker’s intangibility - a local Ward, celebrated generally as the one who had been able to survive four years in the system, which was a bit morbid - but they were intangible to _everything_ , which made them kinda shit as far as weapons go. She had made a few which were on a timer, so they’d phase back into being after a set point, but she was bad at timing in general and sometimes the displaced matter wouldn’t be the target, but rather the spear itself, which had resulted in some frustrating resource costs. At least when she broke shit normally she could just use the scrap, but when the material itself was shunted into a tertiary dimensional space or eradicated due to the laws of the universe, well, you can’t really recycle, can you?

Still, this version of Ahab was probably the last one. As far as the tech and the weird little growth in her brain that apparently fed her this information, if modern science was to be believed, was concerned, it would only be intangible to non-living things. If it worked, she wouldn’t have to run the risk of dimensionally shunting valuable resources into the ether, _and_ she could start possibly taking down some of the more egregious members of the E88, maybe even a cape or two. Kaiser regularly hid in a suit of armour for protection, using walls of metal to defend otherwise, and this would go straight through that. She did wonder if it would hit Hookwolf’s core, though, if that qualified as ‘living’, or if his metal itself might qualify as living too.

Thoughts for later. She was hardly going to seek out Hookwolf, that was an easy way to get brutally murdered by a racist.

Pulling at one of the jackets she’d used as a natural barrier between it and some of her unfinished tech, Taylor retrieved her tools - nothing much, not like she could get in a real lab, but she wasn’t about to leave her lab in an abandoned place anyone could find and making a more realistic lab at home ran into the issue of having parents - from the interior pockets and started pulling away at the casing around the mechanism. She’d do some checks to make sure everything was still in working order, and if it was, she’d get to expanding that circuit board to make the effect extend out to encompass the entire length of a traditional javelin instead of the three and a half feet it was currently afforded.

At the very least, even if she couldn’t start the process to manufacture the full outer length of the javelin, she could at least distract herself with what she had.

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Hebert looked like shit.

Which, well, wasn’t _new_ exactly, but she looked shittier than normal. She crept around the school like a tense wire, shoulders taut, eyes flicking back and forth, barely paying attention to Emma, like she was ready to be attacked, or ambushed, or something.

...Huh, did Hebert really think she snitched? Sophia wasn’t sure how to feel about that, really. On the one hand, she was more than a little pissed at the implication, she was, however begrudgingly, a _Ward_ , and there was something to be said about being trusted not to put someone’s life at risk by outing them. Especially a Tinker, they had shelf-lives comparable to warm hummus and if it got around that she wasn’t affiliated with anyone half of Brockton would be trying to force her to make them things and the other half would be trying to kill her.

On the other hand, it said something reasonably positive about Hebert that she didn’t just immediately relax because someone _promised_ her something. Good instincts, if nothing else, not that it was a surprise that the Shrike had good instincts, considering her rap sheet. God, if Armsmaster found out she knew who Shrike was and never tried to get her to join the Wards, he’d have a fit. It’d be funny as hell, but it’d also probably get her put on the console for the rest of her life, so she was weighing her options.

Still, watching Hebert skulk around was starting to grate on her nerves, and not just because Emma kept looking concerned. It bothered her that she never noticed any of this. Maybe she would’ve believed Hebert could’ve hidden reactions like this if she had been unacquainted with her, but looking back, Hebert had acted like this on more than one occasion, even after she’d left whatever abusive relationship she had been in and rejoined Emma’s orbit. The bags under her eyes were noticeable, the way she tensed when anyone got near especially so. Had she just been completely blind to this? What else was she missing?

Ugh. That was going to bother her for weeks, wasn’t it?

Watching Hebert scurry out the classroom door as the lunch bell rang, Sophia shot Emma a confused glance, getting a shrug in return. She looked worried, sure, but not fragile, not like she had been - looking back on it - for a few days after Hebert had returned to the fold. She had just assumed that Emma and Hebert had argued about something and it had taken a while for her to recover from it, but clearly, she was the opposite of inspective and probably shouldn’t trust her first judgement if she could help it.

Pushing free from her chair and rising to her feet, Sophia snatched her bag from the place she’d left it beside her chair. “I’m going to go find Hebert.”

“Why?” Emma asked, sounding suspicious.

“She keeps running around,” Sophia said, not technically lying. “It’s bothering me, so I’m going to find out why.”

Emma paused, her face almost wincing. “Soph,” she warned, almost quietly, making Sophia still. “Be... gentle with her, okay? I think it’s a bad day for her.”

No fucking kidding. “I will.”

Emma’s smile was a grateful, if somewhat fragile thing.

Turning and escaping through the door, Sophia tried to drum up any memories of where Hebert tended to hide for lunch. The bathroom? Nah. Certainly not the cafeteria, or outside, that girl was pasty enough to do double duty as printer paper. No, if she had to make a guess...

Finding the third-floor stairwell wasn’t difficult, not by a long shot. It was mostly abandoned, largely due to water damage it had taken over the summer. It hadn’t been taped off or anything - because Winslow staff couldn’t be bothered to wipe their own asses if they didn’t get something out of it - even when it probably should be, going by the sight of white-brown mould growing in the gaps between water-stained ceiling tiles.

Walking the relatively short length of the main hallway, Sophia spotted Taylor just out of the corner of her eye. She was sitting on a chair backwards at the corner-end of a branching hallway, chin and arms rest against the top of the back, her curly black hair pulled back into a loose ponytail at the crown of her head. Her bag was laid across one foot, and she hadn’t bothered to take off her jacket, probably because she’d opened the window just behind her fully, letting the winter air in.

“So, what fucked you up?”

Hebert jerked, and it was only in hindsight that Sophia noticed her eyes had been closed. The bags were more pronounced now, somehow, dark purple bruises beneath her eyes that looked heavy and weighted, like age-lines if only for fatigue. Hebert glanced around for a few seconds, eyes confused, before her gaze landed on her, the tension rapidly leaving her body as she slumped forward, eyes lidded and tired, but aware.

“Not a lot of sleep,” Hebert said after a few more seconds of silence, her voice hoarse, rough, like she’d been screaming. “I thought I could get a few minutes before the bell went off, maybe make the day easier.”

Sophia frowned. “Did you think I snitched or something and it kept you up all night?”

“Not really,” Hebert said, but didn’t clarify.

Sighing, Sophia pinched the bridge of her nose. “Are you even going to try to eat lunch? I know you always bring a packed one. Emma’s worried about you, suspicious too.”

Taylor went a bit chalky for a second, looking profoundly nauseated. “No appetite,” she rasped after a moment, drawing her tongue across chapped-looking lips.

Okay, so something had seriously shaken her. Goddammit, was she going to go into the PRT building today and end up with a notice for Shrike’s arrest or something? Jesus, what could fuck up someone like that? “What happened?”

Taylor stared at her, glared almost. There was definite hostility behind the stare, but after a few more seconds, the energy just kinda slid out of her. She looked away, almost ashamedly. “Just... issues with sleeping,” she finally admitted, voice quiet. “Don’t press.”

Nightmares or something then? Better than the alternative, she supposed. “Fine,” Sophia grit out, finding the heat in her voice to be genuine, surprisingly. Something about the entire situation bothered her, but to be brutally fucking honest she wasn’t about to think about that right now. “Can we at least talk about you telling your mother the truth about us?”

That got a reaction, for sure. Hebert staggered a bit, glancing at her with confused, almost pained eyes. Sophia tried not to feel vindicated about that and didn’t quite manage to.

“I...” Hebert swallowed, fingers tensing. “I can’t.”

Okay, she was starting to get tired of this. Fuck Hebert’s sensibilities. “Look—”

“No, wait.” Hebert interrupted, which sent a jolt of something hateful and impulsive down her spine. Sophia breathed in through her nose, tried to center her anger, tensed her hand into a tight fist behind her back. “Please, just... I need a cover, okay? I—I can’t keep sneaking out like that anymore, I don’t even have a _lab_.”

“That sounds like a _you_ problem.”

Hebert crumpled a bit, reaching up to press palms into each eye. “I... can we just pretend? It keeps my mother off my back, it makes her _happy_.”

The last word was spoken with the sort of aching guilt that... well, more than resonated. Sophia adjusted, for a moment, centred her mind, stripped away her presumptions about Shrike or Hebert, then looked at her. Hebe—Taylor, Taylor stared back at her, fragile and bony and looking upset, with bruised spaces beneath each eye and a gaunt cast to her body. She was tense, tense like a knot, ready to snap. There was something uncomfortable in her eyes, a desperate edge that made her look almost manic.

... _Oh_. Taylor was pretty fucked up, wasn’t she?

Sophia shut her eyes, bringing one hand up to cover them both, thumb and forefinger pressing into her temples. She was really considering this, really considering enabling this, _really considering_ just playing along with the charade. A gusty breath pushed out through her lips, more of a sigh, her hand dragging down, pulling the skin around her eyes. Would it really be so much? It would keep Mom off her back about ex-boyfriends and shitty choices, it would give Heb—Taylor more space, it would give them both excuses to do things they’d prefer to...

Releasing her face, Sophia glanced back down at Taylor, who looked back up at her with brown eyes, sharp like broken glass. “Alright,” she said, surprising herself with the calm she spoke with. “Alright, fine. Let's pretend.”

Taylor smiled back at her, and it wasn’t a wholly nice one. The jagged slant of her wide mouth, the little flicker of something more than just manic willpower in her eyes, it made her uncomfortable, made her feel like she was being stared down by something not entirely human. “Thank you,” she said, voice genuine, almost heartfelt. This was getting worryingly close to ‘emotional talk’ territory. “I—just, thanks.”


	4. A-TRACK 1.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Taylor goes on another patrol and Sophia laments her choices in life.

“ _Have fun on your date, hun_!” Mom’s voice was cheerful, expressively so.

Each word was like another stab to her chest. Taylor was just glad she wasn’t here to see her face.

“I will,” Taylor said easily, though the halting ache of guilt only grew stronger in retaliation to the lie. “Don’t worry, I’m just five minutes from where we’re going to meet.”

“ _Mh. I’m going out to pick up some extra stuff for the weekend at that twenty-four-hour place, so I’m going to need to get off soon. Did you need anything specific?_ ”

Glancing around the corner of the brickwork, Taylor caught sight of the group in the dim light of the streetlamps. A field of reds and blacks, colours bared proudly, the sound of laughter distant but not inaudible. “No. I’m good.”

“ _‘Kay, have a nice night. Danny and I expect your call by ten-thirty, eleven at the latest. Be safe, okay?”_

Taylor ducked back behind the corner of the building. “I will be. Talk to you later, Mom.”

Mom laughed again, bright and mischievous. “ _Alright, I won’t keep you from Sophia any longer._ ” ‘Sophia’ was spoken with a certain lilt that almost made Taylor’s face burn. She wasn’t even _really_ dating her, for pete’s sake, how could she still feel embarrassed? Ugh.

The line went dead with a click, Taylor pulling her phone from her ear. Pressing her thumb into the touch screen, the circular wheel of options that was indicative of WIGIT phones ghosted into being, she flicked up towards the ‘end call’ option, then swivelled to ‘sleep’. Just before her screen went black, Taylor caught sight of her text messages, which she had a few of. She’d get back to them later, it’d taken a few days to convincingly plan an outing with Sophia and she wasn’t about to waste her freedom by texting with people she’d see tomorrow anyway. She dropped the phone back into her pocket, she'd deal with that later.

Glancing back down the street, Taylor felt her face harden a little at the sight of them. All told, there were maybe six or seven people, most wearing the colours but without weapons or tattoos. The ones who were leading the pack, about two all told, were the more _visible_ members of the gang, equipped with a bat each and probably a gun was hidden away for if shit got territorial. They were, after all, in Merchant territory, not that Skidmark or his followers ever bothered to keep the place secure.

But then again, that wasn’t really the point either? This was the side of the Empire people didn’t talk about. Sure, the murders and rapes and the more egregious garbage got put on the television and newspapers, the lynchings and hate crimes, but none of this. No, the way the Empire really exerted its influence was through harassment, a constant flood of heckling, threats, and vandalized property. It rarely escalated to more severe crimes, but they still came down, almost daily, in big roving groups to make sure every non-white person in a community knew just _exactly_ how safe they were.

It wasn’t uncommon to see the hangers-on, either. Rich kids, frat boys, most of the group she could see wouldn’t be out of place in a polo shirt at one of Uncle Alan’s parties, accompanied by their too-rich parents and spending most of their time trying to get into the pants of teenage girls. To them, this was more like LARPing, playing the bit to get some of the ‘anger’ out, wearing red and black, sure, but they were just here for some _fun with the boys_ , some casual racism to work out some stress.

The worst part was that there wasn’t much you could _do_ about it. The Empire chose their targets well or got tips from white kids with connections who were feeling displaced by non-white class members or coworkers. She’d seen it happen before, a few of the Empire kids in her first year at Winslow had nearly run Jenna out of the school by following her home one day and spreading her home address to the people who went out on harassment raids, ended up with her getting a few bricks through the window, a swastika spray-painted on her front door, and her front lawn set on fire. It had been the drama of the year, especially when the guys who had put her in danger like that had boasted about it and nearly gotten beaten to death by Jenna’s two college-aged brothers in retaliation for what they’d done to their family.

Spreading her fingers against the brick facade, Taylor shook her head. This wasn’t the first gang of ‘impressionable but good college students’ who she’d attacked. Some of her first outings had been against this type of person, in large part because they chafed the worst. It was one thing to be an avowed racist and spend your nights trying to find targets to kill, that was morally black but _simple_. These college students? All racist, enough at least to go along with this, to terrify people, to show them just how unsafe they are, but they liked to pretend they _weren’t_ , or that it was just a _mistake_ or something they did while drunk.

They got away with it most of the time, too. They’d started calling her Shrike because she’d left people nailed to walls through their flesh, but she hadn’t just arbitrarily chosen to do so. No, she’d done it so that they would have to pull the damn tools of her trade right out of their flesh, they’d have to _be_ processed, they’d have to be written down for being at the scene of a crime. None of them got slapped with hate crime laws, no, rich white boys didn’t, not in Brockton, not in _America_ , but that vandalism charge, that harassment charge? They had to be scrubbed from the record, and likely would be, but it would still cost them _something_.

To a certain extent, that’s all that really mattered to her. That they pay, that their actions have consequences, that they _hurt_ for doing something like that to someone else, all because they could, because they felt _invulnerable_.

Taylor pulled out from behind the building, reaching behind her to click at the dispenser. A dart fell into her hand, and she stumbled, the instinct to check what it was, to make sure she could use it, overwritten. She shut her eyes tight, fighting against the headache that bloomed across her forehead, and tried to think _around_ the issue. She knew, somewhere in her mind, what she was holding, she had the memories associated with it, with studying Blindside’s power when they’d made a short appearance in Brockton after fleeing Accord in Boston. She knew, logically, that the dart in her hand had an effect that made it impossible to look at, but somehow _knowing_ that brought with its own headache.

Sometimes, she wondered what exactly the fuck she was doing making darts like that. What compelled her to make something so counterproductive? Goddamn, was she just stupid?

Ugh. Whatever. Cope later, deal now. Focusing on the people she was approaching helped, not that they had taken notice of her yet. They were all busy, shouting and jeering at one of the smaller houses on the street, stuffed in between two different convenience stores. One guy - black hair, brown eyes, she’d remember him - had a can of red spray paint and was laughing hysterically as he wrote ‘chimp’ between two windows he had defaced with crudely-drawn swastikas. One of the two leaders of the harassment party had gone up to the front door and was rattling his bat against it, a constant _bang-bang-bang_ of metal against painted wood.

One of them, blonde and green-eyed, a guy in his early twenties and a few inches short of six feet, reared back abruptly, one hand cocked, and then threw. The rock sailed, a sloppy arc that slammed into one of the windows on the second floor of the house, cracking a spider web into its surface. There was a shrill, childish scream from the inside, muffled by the walls, which was quickly swallowed by a chorus of laughter.

Must be really fucking funny to them, right? All fun and games, they probably thought; all to _have fun_ , to just enjoy themselves.

Taylor let the dart slip into the space between her fingers. She breathed in, settled the anger in her chest, felt the awareness of her projectile’s path, how it would go if she threw it, begin to settle into focus. She had plenty of targets, the spray-painter, the leaders, the crowd of frat boys, the rock thrower.

The spray painter was the easiest target, at the very least. He wrote slowly, and now that she was closer she could _see_ the mirth on his face, see the way he cherished each letter, each bit of hate. Just some fun, right? If they could have fun, so could she; after all, it was just a game, right? Right?

“Hey!” One of the guys had spotted her apparently, though probably due to the gloom of the street, he hadn’t picked up on her being in costume or wearing a mask. She probably just looked like someone with a scarf and a jacket over some tights. Taking a closer look at the guy, he was blonde, but a platinum blonde that set him apart, with dark-hazel eyes. He was smiling at her, all teeth and dark promises. “You looking for some fun too?”

 _Ah_. Taylor didn’t even bother to check for a path, hitting him at this distance was trivial. She flicked her arm out, wrist snapping, and the dart lanced itself through the expensive boots he was wearing, pinning his foot to the floor. He howled, an agonized noise, and before he could reorient himself, she sped forward, used one hand to shove him to the ground, his foot twisting unpleasantly as it tried to dislodge itself from the thing-that-was-but-wasn’t-there, while using the other to retrieve one of her spears from her belt. A favoured weapon, for sure.

People turned to look at her, but only the guy who had been rattling on the door with his bat got the significance of someone being pinned to the ground. Her spear slid out to its full length with a click, and she held the button down to swap modes. Normally, it was easier to have the spear use up all of its propellant at the start of a throw, give it a boost in speed that made it nearly impossible to dodge, but she didn’t want him to get away, so instead, she set it to slow output.

She hopped once, cocking her arm back, nobody was close enough to stop it, and she relied only a little on the part of her power that told her where it would go to guide her aim. The guy jerked into action, tried to vault the railing on the small landing outside of the door, but got caught on his bat. The javelin left her fingers, its butt end igniting the second it did, but without so much force, instead looking more like a welder’s flame, concentrated, but weaker. The bright screech of the propellant burning nearly deafened her, and half of the crowd of racist morons dropped to the ground, hands over their head, as the spear sailed easily through the air and slammed through bat-man’s shoulder, driving him back into the door with enough force to make it creak before penetrating through, almost agonizingly slowly in comparison to what she was used to, the propellant fizzling out after it had sheathed more than three-fifths of itself into the flesh of his shoulder and through the door behind him.

Like the crack of a starting pistol, this was about the point where everyone, even the other guy with a bat, tried to flee. She had four left, all told, not easy but not difficult either, especially because they were all running in one pack.

Her first target was the kid with the spray paint. She reserved a javelin for him, plucking it from her belt, unfolding it, not bothering to modify the release rate of the propellant. He glanced at her, their eyes met, and something inside of her _warmed_ in triumph at the palpable fear, at the terror. She smiled, not that he could see it behind the fabric of her scarf, and delved further into her aiming ability, felt her focus almost _tingle_. It was hard to describe using it, somewhere between knowing exactly where an object would go and having a little line drawn between the object and where it was likely to go. It wasn't always as accurate as it could be, but then it didn't deviate much anyway. She always hit her target if she tried.

She breathed in, out, and lanced out with her arm, the javelin sailing high, exploding into motion before the weighted tip dragged it back down, diving down at a sharp angle through the leg of spray-paint-guy, embedding itself into the dirt beneath him, the sharp _crack_ of his knee breaking from the sudden impact and his accompanying scream of confused pain a satisfying accompaniment.

Three left.

Her next target was the other bat guy. He was balding, a shame for someone looking like he was maybe twenty-five at most, and had a complicated network of Celtic-knot-esque tattoos around his throat like a collar, with the occasional fascist emblem interspersed throughout it. It was a fine, high-detailed piece of work, and he clearly wore it with pride, his collar low, his shoulders exposed with that sleeveless t-shirt, showing off the pair of black suns he’d gotten inked into the flesh of each. He was running along the sidewalk, sprinting ahead of the two other frat boys, one of whom had faltered at the sight of spray-paint being speared through, had almost turned around to try to pull him free before rushing back towards the others.

She pulled at one of the darts she didn’t keep in her dispenser, mostly because they didn’t fit. She called it a yellowjacket, it was about two times the size of her average darts and had the general form factor of a cigar tipped with a needle as long as her middle finger. At the far end, where a pair of fins fanned out to give it decent aerodynamics, a butt-cap covered a coin-shaped ion battery which gave it just enough juice to shock someone with a charge comparable to a taser. It was among some of her first big creations, she even had a few versions with enough charge in them to superheat metal, not that she’d use those ones on people, considering their lethality.

Celtic-necklace - she didn’t have any better descriptors, he was boring and bland outside of the pieces of artwork sewn into his skin, balding and white with wide brown eyes and an unflattering face covered in stubble that reminded her of wiry pubic hair - skid to a stop, clearly aware she was aiming at him. He reached behind him, scrabbling to pull at the three layers of shirt he’d worn to compensate for the fact that his shoulders were exposed in the middle of January, but whatever he was reaching for, she didn’t give him the chance. A stationary target was almost painfully easy to hit, and she didn’t even need to breathe in to steady herself, just threw her dart and watched it skewer through his foot before the butt end lit up blue and his entire body spasmed violently, dropping like a puppet with its strings cut a breath later, twitching every few seconds.

Two left.

The last two were the frat boys, and to be honest they had gotten a head start on her. Unfortunately for them, they’d also decided to run _with_ one another, which was a big no-no. Didn’t they know Blaster protocols? She’d gotten bored in class once and read the entire handbook for dealing with categorized parahuman threats. Blasters and Shakers had a protocol above 3 to keep people apart unless otherwise specified to avoid the chance of the cape getting lucky and managing to take down two or more operatives with one shot.

Of course, even she wasn’t capable of curving shots, but it wasn’t like she went without secondary options. Reaching beyond her dispenser, Taylor started sprinting forward, feeling the icy air cut against her face, felt her heart soar with glee as her face flushed red, not entirely from the air. Her fingers tightened around the spool of steel cable, giving it a tug to dislodge it from the latch on her belt, pulling the bola free. It wasn’t much to look at, honestly, she hadn’t put nearly as much effort into it, little more than two metal spheres connected by a length of unnaturally flexible steel cable, but _oh_ , would it ever do.

Pressing back into her Thinker power, Taylor spun the bola above her head, letting the speed rise. The trajectory wavered, unhappy with her choice of implement, but eventually settled into a comfortable line, about as accurate as she could manage it without it being entirely delivered by the power behind her arms. She kept running, felt her breath run short, watched as the two faltered, one almost stumbling, dragging the other back with him. She whipped her arm underhand, released, watched the bola sail with unfettered accuracy, slamming into one leg on each of them, pulling in tight and impacting the back of one’s leg with a meaty _crack_ , heavily bruising the bone at the very least, both of them dropping into the grass of the yard they’d been running through.

Taylor slowed down, exhaled harshly. Her throat hurt, burned, but not unpleasantly, her heart hammering away in her chest. She kept her pace at a walk, but not a slow one, pulling free one of the long knives from her belt. The one with the wounded leg probably wasn’t about to go anywhere, that much was clear, but the other? He was already unravelling himself, scrambling forward and trying to get to his feet, currently on his hands and knees.

Taylor breathed in, threw, breathed out in a giggle as the knife sunk home into flesh and bone and pinned him to the grassy yard with a wet _thud_. The guy screamed, loud and wild, turning his face, gaunt and pale and topped with a crown of brown curls, to stare balefully at her, tears brimming in light-blue eyes.

She ignored him, laughter still on her lips.

“You guys sure can run fast,” Taylor commented, wheezing the words out. “Gave me a chase, I enjoy those, you know? None of you care, of course, because you came out to harass people you find inferior by genetics and probably felt invincible up until I pinned one of your buddies to the ground with something that he is physically unable to see.”

“Please!” The one with the wounded leg said, looking at her, fearing her. His green eyes were wide, afraid, and his crop of blonde fluff stuck to his face by the sweat he’d worked up. Man, was he out of shape. “We—I, I wasn’t involved, okay?! I was just here to see how it went, to try and stop them.”

“But you threw the rock,” Taylor said flatly. Broken-leg froze, face cramping.

“I—”

“You threw the rock.” Taylor reached behind her, tapped the button on her dispenser. A heavy dart slid into her fingers, and she pulled it up, let them all see it, glanced at it herself. It looked like a pretty traditional dart, nothing special about it, with the exception that the needle was pyramid-shaped, with sharp, serrated edges that, if she wasn’t mistaken, could cut through steel. It was one of many pretty basic darts that she’d made, all of them just _better_ at sticking into things.

Green-eyes swallowed thickly, fingers clenching in the grass. Taylor smiled, pulled at her scarf so he could see it, then glanced down at his legs.

“Please,” he whispered, hoarse. “Don’t, I—I didn’t mean anything.”

Taylor shrugged. She’d heard that before. “Maybe you didn’t,” she admitted. “But the people in that house?”

She met his eyes, drew her arm back. He paled, tried to move only to yelp as his leg shifted in just the right way to press harder into the metal weight. He writhed for a moment, clutching at his leg. If it was that bad, it was probably broken. Poor baby.

“It meant _everything_ to them.”

Taylor breathed in, out.

She threw.

He screamed.

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Sophia leaned against the back wall to her house, kicking at the snow that had collected around the walls in small piles. Her breath came out as a fog, each puff carried off by the wind, twirling into nothing. It was snowing, ever-so-slightly, tiny flurries that got caught on her eyelashes before instantly melting.

Fucking christ, was she _cold_. Shuffling her arms together, Sophia rocked back on her heel and cussed sharply beneath her breath. Her Mom was out seeing... Fred? Brad? Ugh, something like that. It was ‘date night’ for the two of them, though her mother was working from the assumption that she and Taylor had gone out to a cafe and then just kinda hung out afterwards. She’d been smug for the _entire_ damn thing, too, going on and on about how nice it was and just, eugh. Moms were weird as _fuck_.

“Pst.”

Sophia jolted, snapping her head around to, thank fucking god, Taylor. She was in her civvies instead of that black body-suit, jacket, glove and boot combo that defined her costumed outfit. She had a duffel bag over one shoulder, likely where she put it all, and glancing closer she looked... _happy_. Excited. Her face was flush with warmth and her entire _posture_ was different from what it was like at school. There was none of that tension in her, just a liquid-smooth relaxed air about her that made her teeth itch.

“Took you long enough,” she muttered instead of commenting on any of that, fishing her keys out of the pocket of her jacket and walking over to the back door. She slid the key in, twisted, and pushed the door open into her basement. Glancing behind her, Sophia put as much force into her glare as she could. “Shoes. Off.”

Taylor smiled, bright and cheerful, raising her hands up in silent defeat.

Shucking her boots to the side, Sophia listened to the sound of Terry stomping around upstairs, making enough noise so that she knew he was present. Mom had set up that rule for them, for her sake, she didn’t do well with not knowing and it just made relaxing that much easier. Paula, the littlest in their family, was probably asleep at this time—she _was_ only four, and Terry was the only one outside of Mom who could get her to go to sleep at any reasonable time. She was quite the handful, apparently being one ran in the family.

The door shut behind her, drawing her stare. Taylor had taken off her shoes, chucks, and her jacket, revealing an orange shirt two or three sizes too big that reached her knees, beneath which she was wearing white leggings. She looked... nice, relaxed, put together for the first time since she’d seen the damn twiggy weirdo after meeting Emma at the start of the year. It was almost unnerving, but apparently, Taylor could sense that - or just discomfort in general, who the fuck knows with Tinkers _or_ Thinkers - and smiled at her with lidded eyes, all cat-who-got-the-canary.

Glancing at the clock - quarter-past ten - Sophia grunted. “You want to call your parents? They’re driving you back, yeah?”

“Can I sit down for a bit first? I’m cold and worn out.” Taylor was looking meaningfully at the couch they’d sequestered away in the basement, on which Gumbo, their elderly fat labrador with the personality of a sloth, was taking up the majority of. He was asleep, of course, and even if he’d been originally bought as a therapy dog for her, she’d outgrown the need for him and he’d outgrown the ability to do that job, to begin with. He was living out his twilight years plump, lazy, and happy.

“Sure. Gumbo doesn’t care, just don’t push him off the couch and he’ll reorient himself so he can keep sleeping,” Sophia said, turning back towards the door, noticing that it was already locked. Good, so she was cautious too. Taylor was turning out to be kinda decent with her instincts, occasional near-murder aside. It was still a bit hard to swallow that the very same girl trying to gently coax a fat labrador to give her enough space to sit down once nearly dismembered an Empire gang member with a tinkertech disc, which had earned her her first strike out of three.

Pausing, Sophia turned back towards Taylor. “The television works too, and the remote should be on the table beside you if Terry hasn’t misplaced it again.”

Now that _that_ was out of the way, Sophia turned off towards the basement hallways, passing by the couches. The hallway itself was situated beneath the stairway, and the basement itself was oddly shaped as a direct result. It ended up looking - on a floor plan, anyway - like a big circle with a line pointing straight out from it, with a few squares branching off from it. Rooms, mostly guest ones, but with hers at the far end of the hallway. Her door, covered in posters back when she’d... really cared about rock and boy bands and whatever else, stared back at her for a moment before she got over the bizarre hesitation that clouded her and pushed the thing open.

Her room was a mess, of course. It always _was_ a mess, but it was _her_ mess. She shut the door behind her, just in case, she didn’t need Taylor to see anything amiss, nor did she really need Taylor seeing her shit, to begin with. She’d designed the thing after her mom had inherited the house from Grandpa, who had died when she was eleven. As a result, it meant the entire thing was bedecked in goth shit she outgrew at _12_ but she had never gathered the energy to really bother with changing any of it. Black walls with odd lace trim, a dark-purple carpet beneath her socked toes, a roof covered in wallpaper - for ceilings, roofpaper? - that depicted churning, stormy clouds. Her bed was the same, gothic and ornate and uselessly overpriced but it had survived close to four years of abuse, so she was hardly going to complain.

The rest of her room was the same. She had a black-wood vanity, a big gothic mirror, two wardrobes similarly styled and a genuine-to-god victorian desk they’d painted black one night as a family, not too long after she triggered - though she had been over her goth phase at the time and it had been more to bond with her family in solidarity - on which her computer sat, along with her textbooks, and with which she’d managed to get a big plush leather computer chair out of it. She would’ve kept the desk _anyway_ , to be honest, it was nice and sturdy but damn if that chair didn’t make up for awkwardly gothifying what was otherwise an expensive antique piece of furniture.

Shucking her jacket, Sophia tossed it over her chair. Her pants came next, replaced with some sweatpants because while she couldn’t give two quiet fucks what Taylor’s mother would think if she had been wearing sweats to a date, her mother was a different story and she was there to see her leave in those tight abominations. Her shirt could stay, while it wasn’t the loosest thing she had on offer, it wasn’t uncomfortable to wear. Her socks followed after, mostly because they were still a bit damp from getting snow into her boots.

Walking back out of her room, making sure to shut the door as she went, Sophia prowled back out into the basement living area. Terry had come down, six foot six of too-fucking-tall in a gawky package. From the way he was smiling at Taylor, she was pretty sure he’d just tried to give the Shrike the fucking _shovel_ talk, of all things. Not that she felt good about that, only annoyance, one hundred percent annoyance at her helicopter family who couldn’t let things just fucking _be_.

“My mom should be over in ten minutes,” Taylor said, still smiling at Terry while he smiled at her. While Taylor was taking it all in stride, clearly, _Terry_ was wavering. Apparently, he wasn’t used to people not being intimidated by his presence, which, really, nobody should be because most of his time was spent with his dolls and playing... what was it, Battlehammer? Or something? Ugh, she didn’t know. It was stupid and had orcs, that’s all she _needed_ to know, anyway.

Walking over to Taylor’s side, which got a curious look from the girl in question but, really, they had to at least make _Terry_ think they were dating, Sophia got Gumbo to pull into a ball of pudge and snuffling, giving her just enough space to drop herself, hip-to-bony-as-fuck-seriously-what-the-hell-Taylor-hip. Terry raised an eyebrow at her, and meeting his eyes, mostly because she knew it would make him _squirm_ , she threw one arm over Taylor’s shoulders.

Terry stared, met her gaze, for a total of ten seconds before he lost the staring contest, glanced away, and looked very, very awkward. “So, uh.” He shifted, glancing at the stairs a few times. “I’m just gonna... leave you two to it. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Or whatever.”

Watching him flee the lay-z boy chair and bolt up the stairs startled a laugh out of Taylor if the way her eyes widened in surprise was any indication.

Sophia wondered about him sometimes.

“How was your night?” Taylor asked, startling Sophia more than it probably should. She shot the other girl a glance.

For a moment, Sophia almost moved her arm, got up, and just went back to her room. The urge was there, intimacy, even faked, was hard for her and while spite could carry her _quite_ the distance, it didn’t do her much good in this instance. “I went out on the boardwalk for a bit, bought some clothes, then came home. What about you?”

Taylor just smiled, no teeth, but with an undercurrent of mirth that made Sophia feel more than a little uneasy. “You’ll probably see it on the news tomorrow. They’ll probably have a bunch of rich parents really angry about me attacking their kids 'unprovoked'.”

That... “Well, did you?”

Taylor shot her a look. “They were doing that Empire thing where they harass and vandalize someone’s house. A bunch of frat boys tagged along, you know how it is.”

Sophia did, unfortunately, but it bothered her that _Taylor_ spoke about it like that. There was anger, sure, but there was a certain sense of defeat tucked away in there. Again, she opened her mouth, tried to comment on that, to voice her thoughts, before just shutting it. It wasn’t like she didn’t trust Taylor or something, it was more... she didn’t think anything she could say would do anything.

Ugh. Whatever.

Pulling herself free from Taylor and scritching Gumbo behind the ears, Sophia glanced towards the mini-fridge, tucked away in the corner. “Do you want anything to drink?”

Taylor looked at her, confusion and concern shifting to... was that relief? Weird. “Oh. Uh, sure.”

“What do you like?”

“Anything that isn’t Dr. Pepper.”

She could work with that. She was pretty sure there hadn’t been a bottle of Dr. Pepper in the house since... three boyfriends ago? Gregory or something, dude drank the shit like it was going extinct. Walking over to the mini-fridge and crouching down, silently counting the minutes until Ms. Hebert would get here and save both of them from awkwardly hovering around one-another, Sophia popped the door open.

“Does Coke do anything for you?”

“The drug or the drink?”

“Ugh. Fuck off.”


	5. A-TRACK 1.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor is run ragged, Emma catches on, Sophia has questions.

Mrs. Bauer was a stout, prickly woman in her mid-to-late 30s who - obvious to anyone who had to be in her presence for longer than thirty seconds - had neither prepared for nor willingly made the decision to be a high school gym teacher. She swore a lot, she held unfair and unpleasant expectations of the average teenager, she ran or at least played a part in most sports or fitness-adjacent clubs in the school, and she was by far the best teacher Winslow had to offer.

Taylor, personally, hated her.

“Hess!” Mrs. Bauer bellowed, tweeting that damn fucking red whistle that went everywhere with her. “If your ass isn’t at the front of the pack by the end of this you’ll be running _sprints_ after school, are we clear?”

Sophia made a wordless noise of complaint that was audible even from the distance Taylor was away from her, about six people and a good half-dozen feet all told. Emma, to her left, was wheezing heavily, face smeared in sweat and her fingers clenched into tight fists. Even she wasn’t feeling too hot, her breath a little too heavy, the sweat around her brows and down the back of her neck an annoyance that she couldn’t risk breaking her stride to wipe away.

Blessedly, the last of the run around the enclosed gymnasium was only another lap, and Sophia cleared it with gusto, nearly collapsing into the wall as she did, looking ragged and overly-flush. Taylor pulled herself to a stop a few seconds later, cracking the toes of her shoe against the floor, and Emma followed shortly thereafter, giving the game away when she just about nearly had her legs collapse out from under her in relief, dropping to her knees and almost crawling her way to the wall, where she was safe from being trampled.

The burn in her legs was familiar and welcome, the sort of dull ache she got after a particularly good patrol. Sure, she got none of the catharsis from just running, there was no adrenaline in her system, no elation, but the cocktail of hormones physical exercise encouraged still swam around in her system, made her head feel a little light. Walking unsteadily over to her bag, Taylor pulled her water bottle free from the side pocket, brought it to her lips and squeezed, a torrent of some off-brand Gatorade pouring into her mouth, tasting vaguely like lemons.

Turning away from the wall, Taylor watched Camer—er, _Lawrence_ , cross the finishing line, hobbling on crutches. Both of his legs were wrapped in bandages, clean ones, admittedly, but ones nonetheless. It was apparently part of the physiotherapy he had to get to heal the musculature she’d stabbed through, though she’d somehow managed to miss the bone. It was more than a little awkward watching him tottle around, avoiding people’s gazes, but, well, he’d done the crime. It wasn’t her fault he didn’t like the punishment.

“How are you still standing?” Emma croaked, drawing her gaze back towards her. She was looking up, sweaty and messy and entirely out of her element, her face pinching into disgust as her hand went to pluck at the sweat-stained t-shirt that had gotten stuck on the skin of her collarbone.

Taylor blinked. That... shit, why hadn’t she thought up an excuse for it? “I run.” She hedged, carefully.

“Your mother drives you to school,” Emma parried, eyes narrowing in playful suspicion.

Taylor coughed, well, more wheezed. Her throat burned something nasty, maybe she was in rougher shape than she thought. It wasn’t a great idea to follow up a physically exhausting patrol with gym class, she probably should’ve known better. “I run nowadays, is all.”

Dramatically flopping her head back, Emma extended one arm, face set in mock betrayal. “What happened to my nerd?” She whined, bright and _warm_ and friendly. “Where did she go? How did she get replaced with a fitness nut?”

 _She was emotionally and physically shattered by someone she trusted, stared at herself in the mirror and saw only the sort of victims you see in cold case crime documentaries,_ the unpleasant, invasive part of her mind provided.

“She put down the books and picked up weights,” Taylor said instead, mentally pushing away at the discordant rush of single-second flashbacks. “Gotta get bulked up for the ladies.”

Emma choked, laughed. Bright, tinkling laughter, somewhere between the laugh of her mother and Alan’s laugh. Restrained, yes, but bubbly and almost giggly, instead of big heaping booms, each laugh a pronounced bark, Emma laughed in short staccato bursts. It made her chest warm, flush, unrepentant happiness at no cost to herself. She almost hated how novel that idea was to her, how twisted she was to expect something different.

Taylor glanced away, towards Sophia, who had finally pulled herself up from the wall and was now making her way over to them, valiantly ignoring Mrs. Bauer’s offered advice. Glancing from her to the clock, Taylor tilted her head to one side. Just a few minutes before lunch, then.

Meeting Emma’s eyes, who had grown still and silent, Taylor smiled. “You wanna hang at lunch?”

The girl in question relaxed a bit, then smiled back, just as bright as her laugh. “Yeah, sure. Do you want to bring Sophia along, too?”

“I mean, I don’t think _I_ can get her to do anything,” Taylor pointed out, getting a snort out of Emma, who had managed to find her phone and was now playing with it in her lap. “But if she wants to?”

Dropping her bag beside Emma, Sophia stared at the two of them, looking thoroughly exhausted and limp. “As long as you don’t ask me to climb a _single_ flight of fucking stairs, Taylor, you can even choose the venue.”

Placing one hand over her heart, Taylor pushed a smirk to her face, getting an annoyed glare from both Emma and Sophia in retaliation. “Why, I would be _honoured_.”

“Sit the fuck down you telephone pole,” Sophia barked, sliding down into a crouch beside Emma.

Opening her mouth to respond, Taylor was cut short by the bell.

Sophia, having just slid onto her ass, glanced up at Taylor, then to the clock. With a noise almost like a kettle boiling, she banged the back of her head against the wall. Taylor watched raptly as Sophia, clearly struggling to reign her temper in, staggered her way back into a stand, each push of her legs accompanied by a sharp wince or tightened jaw, the discomfort obvious. Finally on her feet, Sophia glanced down at her bag, tried to bend over, and then immediately stopped, glaring at the two of them, Emma barely withholding her laughter if the way her shoulders were twitching was any indication.

“When I get this bag,” Sophia said, voice flat and harsh. “I will start hitting you with it, and if I stop before you’re dead, you will be _very very lucky_.”

Emma broke into hysterical cackles. Sophia kept her promise.

* * *

Mid-January in Brockton was odd, in comparison to the rest of the east coast. It wasn’t warm, not really, Brockton shared the Atlantic and got long, cold, miserably wet winters as a direct consequence, but it also wasn’t the biting, fierce chill that you could probably find in Boston or up near the Bay of Fundy. Really, Brockton was actually _unusually_ warm for the region, sometimes they’d get into the negatives, between -1 to -10, but never for too long, and only in short bursts.

The reason for that wasn’t anything Taylor knew off her heart, but if she had to guess it was the fact that Brockton was a bit of a valley. Not entirely, but it had enough rocky terrain around the outskirts to trap heat like a vessel, taking the edge off of Atlantic winters and leading to the phenomenon of mid-January feeling like spring was almost around the corner, even if she knew that it could just as easily be frigidly cold in a few days and nobody would consider it all that weird.

True to her promise, she had led them outside but not up any flights of stairs, but rather straight outside, to the hill just at the front of the school. The grass was all brown from the cold, sure, but the hill Winslow sat on was hardly claustrophobic or ugly, giving a great view of the city from its perch, and while she was getting dirt on her ass by sitting on the ground, she didn’t care. Hell, she was pretty sure Sophia and Emma didn’t either, though both of them had bundled up the moment she’d mentioned going outside.

Biting into her sandwich, Taylor tried not to be disappointed. So Dad made lunch today, not great, not bad, either, it was just he had a... unique interpretation of when and where you should be adding paprika to things, and roast beef kinda-really wasn’t one of them.

Bumping shoulders with Emma, Taylor wagged the sandwich in her direction.

“Paprika?” She asked, unprompted. Her lunch, by contrast, was a salad with a honey-coloured dressing that smelled _profusely_ of vinegar. Whatever she got out of eating that with raw red onion and heirloom tomatoes, well, Taylor sure as fuck didn’t know.

Swallowing her bite, Taylor nodded. “Roast beef.”

Emma made a face.

Sophia stared at the two of them, looking a little confused. “Paprika?”

“Her Dad puts it on everything,” Emma supplied easily, not even looking away from her phone. The glare of the sun made whatever on it unreadable from Taylor’s angle, and anyway it wasn’t nice to peek on people’s personal conversations.

“Dad got on a kick when he came back from their last anniversary,” Taylor continued, Emma having trailed off. “Came home like he’d had a revelation, I didn’t understand what it meant until he started putting the shit on everything. It works, sometimes, but paprika doesn’t really go on roast beef sandwiches, is all.”

Sophia made a weak, bewildered noise. “Why is your family so weird,” she asked after a moment. “Is this a white parent thing? I mean my mom can be a smug bitch but she’s not weird like that.”

“No, it’s a uniquely _Hebert_ thing,” Emma cut in before Taylor could defend her parents from justified complaints about being ‘weird’. “I’m convinced that the only reason why my and Taylor’s dads even get along is that Danny forgoes class consciousness just to fuck with him by being weird. I don’t understand their friendship.”

“I don’t think my mom and your mom do either,” Taylor pointed out.

Emma blinked. “You might be right about that, actually.”

Personally, Taylor was pretty sure Aunt Zoe would try to elope with her mom if Dad and Uncle Alan had a falling out, not that it was likely.

Glancing at Sophia, who was picking at her own sandwich, likely free of excessive amounts of paprika, Taylor tilted her head to one side. “Got any commentary?”

“Literally nothing besides the fact that this confirmed exactly what I assumed your family must be like,” Sophia shot back without any heat, pausing to take a bite.

“Well, you’ll have to meet them someday,” Emma interjected, sounding almost tense. “You’re dating, after all.”

Sophia choked.

Taylor did too, even if she hadn’t been eating anything at the time.

“Who?” Taylor managed, coughing a few times. Sophia wasn’t in any state to say anything, her throat bobbing visibly as she tried to work the crumbly excess of her sandwich down her throat, skin warm and—no, Taylor, focus. More important things.

“Dad,” Emma said, voice carefully blank. “Mentioned it at dinner. Were either of you going to tell me?”

She sounded... hurt. Not betrayed, not upset, but hurt, pained. Taylor felt her chest tighten a little, opened her mouth to say something but was cut off by a sharp shake of Emma’s head.

“No, okay. Look, just... I’m not happy you guys didn’t tell me, but I get it. Taylor, you _deserve_ a good relationship, you do, you deserve a person who will treat you well after Brent. I refuse to ruin this chance,” Emma said, conviction almost managing to bury the slight pain, the waver. Taylor still noticed, Sophia probably did too. “B-but, uhm, I hope, that it can work out with you two? I won’t try to interfere and I’ll get if you guys want to hang out more on your own without a thi—”

“ _No_.” Sophia didn’t _quite_ shout, but it was close. Her voice brooked no argument, was harsh and a total rejection of what she was saying. Emma froze, Taylor did too, that was the first time she’d heard anything like that coming out of Sophia. Most of the time, she acted like nothing could truly affect her, that nothing could stick. Something else shifted, a little puzzle piece matching up with the next, and it took a lot not to say _oh_ because, well, obvious or not, Sophia liked Emma.

Shit, how hadn’t she noticed that?

“No, no, just...” Sophia hesitated, wavered, before overcoming whatever was holding her back. “Look. Emma, we’re going to include you, you’re not a third wheel, we’re a group. I don’t _care_ if Jacklyn Beanstalk over there wants more alone time”—Taylor couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her at that name—“but you’re part of... whatever, this is. Okay? Just, fuck me don’t go burning bridges that quickly. Jesus fuck. You’re like the only person I tolerate.”

Emma, unusually quiet and withdrawn, glanced at Taylor. “What about your girlfriend?”

“The only one I tolerate,” Sophia reaffirmed, shocking a giggle out of Emma. She’d curled into herself a little bit, her salad laying abandoned on the ground, her phone clutched tightly in one hand. There was a moment where, against her own better judgement, Taylor did wonder if Emma was about to self-destruct, if she was about to burn the bridges and run off to pretend like whatever was bothering her didn’t, before finally relaxing, going a bit limp.

“Got worked up over nothing, huh,” Emma said almost wetly, rushing up to brush her sleeve over her eyes.

Taylor leaned over, working mostly on instinct, and encircled Emma in her arms. Emma stiffened for a moment, sniffled - not _sniffed_ , Emma had a good haughty sniff and this wasn’t it, this was weak and vulnerable and made Taylor want to _hurt something_ \- but relaxed after a few more seconds. Unexpectedly, another pair of arms wrapped around Emma, pulling them all in close, forcing Taylor’s nose into the side of Sophia’s sweatshirt.

...Was it weird that Sophia smelled good? Because, like, Emma did too. Emma smelled like peppermint, warm and inviting, her skin was soft and she was, if not small - she was a little above average - at least smaller than Taylor. Her body was warm, she was nice to hug, unlike her bony self, and in general, she was just... relaxing to be near, to physically touch.

Sophia was sort of the same, just... different. Sophia smelled like used leather and oils, earthy, and she was warmer, almost hot to the touch in the chill of mid-January in Brockton. She was all corded muscle - not a surprise, Sophia had brought home the first few track-and-field trophies Winslow had won since it was originally built to house all the poor residents the rich landowners didn’t want in their schools - but not exactly _hard_ to the touch, not like her, where muscle had turned wiry and corded. She was nice, intense, it made her relax, made her eyes droop a little.

Even if it was weird, at least Emma, with her tiny genuine smiles, so hard to find among the hundreds of faces she wore for everyone else, seemed to be enjoying herself.

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Laying on her back, Sophia tried very hard not to think about the fact that she got involved in a _hug pile_. It was hard to avoid thinking about, to be fair, she had just shown emotional weakness in front of someone. Her therapist - not the PRT-issued ones, garbage as they were considering they got shuffled around like cards in a _fucking_ deck - would be proud of her, and she kinda hated feeling happy about that. Fuck emotions, honestly.

To her left, Emma was laid on her back as well, staring up at the roof of clouds that hadn’t quite managed to fully cover the blue of the sky. To _Emma_ ’s left was Taylor, who was pointing obstinately at something that, no matter what she said, genuinely did not look like a fucking cat. It looked like... god, she didn’t know, the spokes on a bike?

“You really suck at this,” Emma said bluntly, tilting her head, squinting, clearly trying to see Taylor’s logic.

Taylor made a faux-hurt noise. “None of you can see my genius.”

For a moment, Sophia kinda wondered if it was a Tinker thing. Throughout the years, she’d been around to see a few Tinkers come in and out of the Brockton Wards. Hell, she was pretty much the only consistent thing in it, except for Dean and more recently - largely due to her age - Missy. Most of the past Wards were older, late-teens, close to graduation, especially the Tinkers. She’d noticed, maybe only abstractly until she had put a word to it, that Tinkers kinda... _thought_ weird. They worked down different tracks of logic to end up at the same result, tracks of logic that rarely made sense to anyone but them or people with similar specialties.

Or maybe she was overthinking it and Taylor was just _really_ fuckin’ weird, just like her parents.

“Oh, right. I completely forgot,” Emma shifted, pushing herself into a sitting position. “Do either of you want to come along with me tomorrow after school to a photoshoot? Dad’s only going to be able to drop me off and I would like it if I had someone familiar. It’s not an important one, it’s just...”

“Drama?” Taylor supplied knowingly. Sophia knew that Taylor had been going with Emma to her shoots when they were younger, though as far as she knew she’d stopped doing so during their first year of high school, for what might be obvious reasons. That and, truth be told, she probably got bored. She had gone to one or two shoots with Emma - for _no_ other reason than to be there - and they had been some of the most boring experiences of her life with a lacklustre and kinda weak pay-off. As much as the magazines might paint the shoots in beautiful contrast and with pitch-perfect angles, sitting in a hard plastic seat at the far other end of a room while skinny tweens and teenagers pose awkwardly on a raised stage was hardly fun.

“Drama,” Emma reaffirmed.

But, shit. Even if she wanted to go, she couldn’t, could she? She had patrol immediately after school - they were even picking her up - and then she had her therapy session followed by another visit to PRT HQ for debriefing and their twice-monthly threat meeting. All of those were mandatory, she couldn’t just skip. Fuck.

“Sorry,” Sophia said, refusing the urge to twist her fingers together. “I have...” _therapy_ , she wanted to say, even a small kernel of truth, _something_. “Family things to deal with right after school.”

Thankfully, Emma didn’t look disappointed or resigned. She just smiled that sort of smile people use to say they’re hoping for your best, before glancing towards Taylor.

Blinking slowly like a cat, Taylor tilted her head to one side, thinking. “I genuinely don’t have anything better to do,” she said after a moment, stretching her arms out behind her as she rose back into a sitting position. “I’ll have to tell my parents, and you know they’ll make a thing about it because I haven’t gone in a while and whatever else, but... I can, if you’d have me.”

Emma smiled, brightly. It would almost be comical how Taylor relaxed beneath its focus, if not for the fact that her weakness to praise and positive reinforcement was likely from her recent history. Shit, that was depressing.

“Of course I’ll have you,” Emma said pointedly, reaching over to swat Taylor on the head. Dramatically, Taylor dropped back, clutching her head, mouth open in shock. “Oh, stop that.”

“You mussed my hair!”

“You don’t even comb it to begin with!”

“You don't comb curly hair! You let it do its own thing!"

“Even if that isn't bullshit so help me god I will tell your _mother_ about the comb incident.”

Taylor squawked in outrage. “You wouldn’t! You promised!”

“Wouldn’t I?” Emma said, smirking in a close approximation of Taylor’s own ‘I’m about to say something stupid’ smirk.

The faux-banter continued on, devolving into background noise. Sophia returned her focus to the sky, watched as grey clouds slid into place where white, fluffy ones had been before. Probably meant rain was likely, though she could just check the weather app if she really needed to know. Taking a breath in, then out, Sophia turned to watch her two... friends? If you could call it that? Playfully shoot harmless jabs at one-another back-and-forth.

For once, she kinda felt like things might work out alright.


	6. A-TRACK 1.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor meets a cape, Sophia tells people the truth.

“It’s good to see you again, Taylor,” Alan said easily, fingers drumming over his steering wheel. They’d gotten stuck in traffic for a little, though it wasn’t like they were running late or anything. The studio itself was in sight, further down the road and off to the right, a warehouse-like structure nestled between industrial-looking concrete buildings.

Taylor twitched, glanced at Emma, who was busy texting on her phone, then back at Alan, who was looking at her from the rear-view mirror. “You too, Uncle Alan.”

Alan smiled, and Taylor felt a bit nervous. Something about this felt like a set-up. 

“So, how are you doing with Sophia?”

Ugh. Of course. 

Trying not to roll her eyes, Taylor leaned back into her seat, flicking her eyes up as the light turned from red to green, Alan pulling forward. “We’re doing good.”

“Mh, I’m sure,” Alan said, wry humour in his voice. This was, Taylor thought, outside of her own father’s weirdness, the primary reason why Alan and her dad got along. They both _really_ liked screwing with people and making people uncomfortable, likely for different reasons, but a unionist and a lawyer can make surprisingly effective bedfellows, unfortunately. 

Emma grunted, finally giving the two of them the time of day. “Dad, don’t bully Taylor.”

The bully in question chuckled, putting some mock hurt into his voice. “How could you claim I would do such a thing, Emma? Do you think so little of your father?”

Emma looked him straight in the eye from the rearview mirror. “Yes.”

“Even my own daughter,” Alan bemoaned. His hands remained firm on the wheel, but Taylor could almost _hear_ him clutching his chest-and-or-pearls in outrage in the tone of his voice.

If it wasn’t clear, Emma got most of her personality from her _father_. Aunt Zoe was a wonderfully uncomplicated woman with a blunt side who, Taylor, frankly liked more than Alan, mostly because when she made a joke or poked fun at something about Taylor, she didn’t put on a theatre show to do it. You would think it would be the other way around, but she was almost certain Alan’s unspecified - the adults refused to comment on it - time in law school made a screw or fifteen get loose and now to express anything that wasn’t fatherly disapproval the man reached for a costume to do it. 

Finally pulling into the parking lot, where about six other teenagers and one particularly grumpy-looking Madame Lambert were waiting, Taylor unbuckled her seat belt, grabbed her bag, and was out of the overpriced sedan before Alan could inflict his attention on her again. Valiantly, Taylor ignored his quiet laughter at her scrambling out the door like her ass was on fire, but she did flip Emma the bird when she heard her join in too.

Fuck it was cold. Taylor huddled in, dumping her hands into her front pockets and wincing as even both layers of jacket refused to protect her entirely from the negative degree temperature outside. Brockton Bay really was fucking cursed, she was pretty sure anyway, how it could go from pleasant, if a bit nippy, weather, to the sort of weather that makes northern Canada an inhospitable wasteland - well, that and all the S-Class threats they had wandering around - in less than two total days was, frankly, fucking _beyond_ her. 

Emma finally climbed out of the car, waving her fingers at her father. Alan smiled, looking as bright as the sun - another thing Emma apparently inherited from her father, not that Taylor was complaining - before pulling away from them, the car’s exhaust belching smoke as he drove around the parking lot and out through another exit, pulling onto the busy street and almost immediately getting locked between two obstinate trucks about four times his size and moving at about maybe 10mph all told.

“Didn’t he have a case to get to?” Taylor asked blankly.

Emma shrugged. “He’ll survive. C’mon, I don’t want to get frostbite.”

Turning to Emma, Taylor followed after her as they walked the length of the concrete parking lot. Madame Lambert was near the door, where she almost always was as the liaison for whatever company Emma got modelling work for. The other girls were vaguely familiar, and she chalked up her inability to recall the names of each to the fact that they’d probably grown over the year or so since she’d last seen them.

Once they’d gotten close enough, Madame Lambert finally caught sight of them and smiled. She was an older lady, earthy brown skin wrinkled around her face, with a tousle of curly grey hair crowning her head, but it didn’t detract any from her smile. Sure, apparently Madame Lambert was a taskmaster who made Emma bitch and whine when she wasn’t looking, but to be honest, Taylor wasn’t about to reject blind kindness outright, not unless it came with a cost of some kind.

“Emma, you’re needed inside, ah, about three minutes ago?” Madame Lambert commented, motioning towards the door as they grew increasingly near. Emma blinked, balked, and then started less walking, more almost-jogging, towards the door, her duffle bag hanging from one shoulder, hand fisted in the strap that connected to it. Madame Lambert leaned down, dragging a card connected to a lanyard across what was presumably a card reader, the heavy door clicking open and letting Emma push through and into the warehouse.

Smiling at her, Madame Lambert reached out to hold the door open. “Taylor, you look so good! Tall, too. Taller than me now.” Madame Lambert was a tall woman, or at least, Taylor _remembered_ her being. She had grown, sure, but... it felt odd looking down at her. “How tall are you now?”

Walking towards the door, Taylor reached out to take the weight of it. It was one of those security doors, thick and with some sort of magnetic pull that made holding it open an active fight against an opposing force. “Five... ten? I think? Maybe five-eleven. I’m not sure if I’m going to stop growing soon.”

Pushing it fully open, Taylor passed through the threshold, catching sight of Emma’s back vanishing beyond a curtain of fabric. “Have a good day, Taylor,” Madame Lambert said in the few short seconds before the door slammed shut behind her, cutting the noise and chill away, leaving her almost helplessly overdressed for the warmth of the warehouse. 

Unzipping her outer coat, Taylor pulled the thing from her shoulders, rolled it up, and threw it over her shoulder. Sure, she had her bag, which would be able to hold her jacket, but she didn’t really want to drop the thing, unzip it, and then spend time awkwardly crouching over it and stuffing the damn thing inside. When she got situated, she’d manage.

Following after where Emma presumably had gone, Taylor met that same wall of fabric and pushed through it, revealing the interior of the studio. It was pretty generic, which wasn’t unusual: a raised platform, on which green screens had been erected to cover the entire back wall. There were closer to thirty other people here, spread out among a space that could easily host about three hundred, most of whom were near her, at the far end of the hall where they’d set up refreshment tables and plastic chairs for people to sit in.

“Oh thank god you didn’t get lost,” Emma’s voice startled, making Taylor whip her head around in surprise. Emma, not ten feet away and near the wall, was standing beside a blonde girl - hair pulled up into a ponytail - entirely outfitted in sweats and a pair of sunglasses. In one hand, what looked like bubble tea in a huge cup, and in the other, a similar sort of duffle bag that Emma had brought with her. Vaguely, Taylor was reminded that the company provided the bags themselves during a rally a few years ago for funds and for a more cohesive brand to market towards supporters. 

“Vicky, this is Taylor,” Emma said, voice rapid-fire. “Taylor, this is Victoria Dallon. Get along, or whatever, I need to go get dressed and get prepped for stage make-up in like, ten seconds.”

What. “Wait, are you handing me off to someone?”

Emma shot her a flat look. “Taylor the last time I left you alone at one of these _you got lost_ . In a _studio warehouse_. Of course I am.”

“It’s fine,” Victoria, whoever the fuck _that_ was, said, waving lazily with the hand she was holding her cup with. “I’ll keep an eye on her. You go do your thing.”

Emma shot her a grateful smile before turning on her heel and rushing towards the ‘staff only’ door at the far other end of the room, just beside the raised stage. Taylor watched her almost blankly, not quite sure how to feel about the fact that Emma thought it was necessary to get her a babysitter, before finally Emma pushed through the staff door and was out of sight.

Glancing towards Victoria, Taylor squinted. “Do I know you from something?” She did kinda look familiar, in that vague, _I might’ve seen your face once at one of these things_ sort of way. 

Victoria, straw almost raised to her lips, choked. She stared at her, or at least Taylor assumed so, considering she couldn’t see her eyes behind the thick, ‘I have a hangover go the fuck away’ sunglasses she wore, before, with little prompting, Victoria started to _fucking_ float. 

Taylor stared.

Victoria stared.

There was a beat of silence before it clicked. “Oh, right, New Wave.” Look, they didn’t patrol near where she did, okay? She’d seen Laserdream at a mall all of once, and that was about the sum total of her experiences around _that_ brand of particular political lunacy.

Victoria snorted. “‘Oh, right’. Jeez, I wish everyone acted like you did, it’d make my life so much easier if people just didn’t notice me.”

“You are wearing sunglasses and sweats,” Taylor pointed out, feeling a bit prickly. 

Victoria ‘pshaw’d’, again managing to break the touch-and-go impression of Glory Girl she had in her head. “I just got finished doing my bit on the stage, I’m allowed to look like this.”

That... huh. “Are your parents coming to pick you up later or something?”

Victoria glanced back at her, let her sunglasses slide down her face, and then proceeded to float without prompting again. 

Oh. “Right, flight.”

That got a laugh out of the superheroine, sharp and bark-like, almost giddy. She choked it back a few times, not quite managing, before wheezing and toppling back so that her back pressed into the wall, slowly lowering herself back down to her feet. “You looked so bewildered,” she choked. “Sorry, I just—I just _don’t_ get those reactions anymore. It’s nice, for once.”

Finally, after gathering herself back together once again, Victoria placed her tea down on the table just to the left of her and turned fully. She reached up, plucked her sunglasses off of the bridge of her nose, folding them over the collar of her sweatshirt. Reaching out, Victoria offered her hand, palm sideways and fingers splayed. A handshake. “Sorry. I’m Victoria Dallon, sometimes Glory Girl. It’s nice to meet Professor Hebert’s kid, she talks about you a lot.”

 _What_. Still reaching out to take her hand, Taylor less shook, more let her arm be shaken by Victoria. “How do you know my mom?” She asked faintly. 

“I’m taking preliminary university courses. Your mom specifically is my teacher for literature,” she explained, still smiling. “Don’t worry, she wasn’t very talkative about you, but alongside knowing Emma because Alan and my mother work at the same firm, I’ve heard bits and pieces.”

Feeling a bit faint, Taylor forced an awkward smile to her face. “It’s nice to meet you, even at a disadvantage, then. I’m Taylor, I guess.”

Pulling her hand away, Taylor let it drop to her side. An awkward sort of pause settled into the air, not that Victoria seemed particularly bothered by it. She had floated back over to the table and plucked her tea from it, taking sips from the straw that rattled the cup a little. 

“How’d you get lost in a studio warehouse, anyway?” 

Taylor groaned. “It was once, okay. I was told to go the wrong way by one of Emma’s... competitors, or whatever you want to call it. I ended up in the maintenance part of the building and spent half an hour trying to retrace my steps because that same girl had rearranged the hallway to block off the way I came in. It was a mess.”

Victoria winced, somewhat sympathetically. “I’ve avoided getting caught up in that,” she mentioned, taking another sip from her cup. “Mostly because I’m kinda... untouchable, in that way. I’ve still seen it happen.” 

Grunting, but not making any other mention of it, Taylor walked over to the nearest chair, picked it up with one hand, and hauled the thing back towards Victoria. She discarded her bag near the wall and dropped the chair down by the table, laying her shucked coat over the length of the back, before finally dropping herself down into it. They were _really_ uncomfortable, like all the bad things about classroom chairs just with even fewer accommodations for anyone taller than five-three, but at least she could sit now.

Rummaging around in the pockets of her jeans, Taylor dragged out her phone, folding one arm over the table and activating her phone, leaving it near her lap. The screen lit up, showing a small handful of texts, no missed calls, and a few notifications elsewhere. Basically nothing, in other words. Ugh.

“Bored already?” Victoria asked, Taylor glancing up to find her hovering slightly over her, glancing down at her phone, but not looking too invested with what was on the screen. Shrugging a bit awkwardly, Taylor turned to glance at the stage, where a thirteen year old girl was being directed to ‘pose like she was running’ by a pudgy man in his mid-to-late thirties. The girl in question was wearing an assortment of pretty normal clothes, all things aside, but she looked like she was nearly in tears. 

“I guess,” Taylor offered, flicking to her texts. Sophia hadn’t texted her, but nothing said _she_ couldn’t. “Sorry, it’s been about a year since I’ve gone to one of these, and I really want to make Emma feel supported. I kinda fucked up on that.”

Victoria hummed a long, not-entirely-curious note. “Did you guys have a rough patch or something?”

“Not entirely. I was stupid, I just pushed everyone away.” Aaand, send. Hopefully, that emoji-filled text would annoy Sophia sufficiently enough to—wow, she was _really_ quick to reply when she was pissed. “We’re rebuilding bridges, reforging ties, whatever.”

Victoria took another audible sip of her tea, Taylor not looking up to check where she was. 

“That’s good,” Victoria said after a moment. “I can understand having trouble with relationships, I’m glad you guys are back together.”

Taylor did glance up that time, shooting Victoria a flat look. After a few moments, the blonde harpy laughed, a bright cackle of mischief and mirth. “Sorry,” she said, waving her off, floating back towards the other end of the table, finally moving free of her personal space bubble. “Couldn’t help myself. I know you two aren’t dating.” 

Oh god, she was almost worse than _Alan_ , and she was a teenager too, with powers, so she could say out of left field shit without being weird and restrained as a result of being a parent. Jesus christ. You know what? She wouldn’t suffer alone for this. Reaching up with her phone, she took a picture and shot off another text to annoy Sophia.

“What was that for?” Victoria asked, sounding more amused than anything else.

Taylor frowned, knowing it looked petulant. “I refuse to suffer alone,” she sniffed. 

Her comment startled a burst of giggles out of Victoria. “Sorry, sorry, I am usually more mature than this, you just kinda caught me off guard by not knowing who I was, and it was just, so easy. Even with the picture, which, not gonna lie, I deserved if you’re talking shit about me.” Another snort, Victoria folded a hand over her mouth and choked a laugh into it until she could regain her composure. “Do you want me to pose for a few more sho—” 

“Taylor!” 

Glancing back around, she caught sight of Emma waving her down, beside her was a lady with a striking resemblance to Madame Lambert if about forty years younger. Tilting her head, Taylor rose to her feet, shot Victoria an annoyed look, which got another laugh out of her, shot _Sophia_ another text message, and walked the length of the room towards Emma. She was dressed in what looked like... spring clothing? It looked good on her, complimented her hair.

The woman, on the other hand, stood at around her height, had warm brown skin, hawkish features, and was wearing a full suit. It worked for her, sure, but by the time Taylor had come to a stop a few feet in front of her, she was feeling a little intimidated by the way the woman heatlessly raked her eyes over Taylor’s figure. Slipping her phone into her pocket, she glanced awkwardly at Emma, who shrugged. 

“Taylor, is it? Yes, you’re tall enough, right build too, good definition from what I can see beneath that ugly coat of yours.” Hey! It wasn’t _that_ ugly, it was just, multi-coloured and soft. “You look like a heptathlon athlete, amateurish, yes, not Olympic, but someone with that sort of muscle distribution. Lack of thigh definition but noticeable arm definition makes you not a weightlifter, for certain.” She had an accent of a kind, not one she’d heard before, faintly... Cajun? If she wasn’t mistaken.

Taylor froze, tensed. Her eyes flicked to Emma, who looked back awkwardly, eyes not quite meeting her own, hovering over her body. What the fuck. 

After a moment, the woman nodded, reached behind her, waving her fingers. A small, bland-looking man with shoulder-length curly ginger hair approached and handed her a bundle of clothes, all folded into a pile and enclosed within a plastic sleeve. She extended it out to Taylor, who more than a little awkwardly took it. It looked like more spring apparel, but with shorter sleeves, enough to show off the definition on her arms.

The woman smiled, and it was not a cruel smile, but it also wasn’t exactly a _happy_ smile. It was the sort of smile someone makes when they’re _very_ pleased with what they’re about to do. “How would you like to make three hundred dollars?”

Taylor opened her mouth to reject, shut it. Glanced at Emma, who looked neutral, then at the woman, who looked almost excited. Shit. She could do a lot with that money, buy a few things, make a few new weapons, actually have something more complicated than strapping explosions to the butt end of a long, pointy stick.

...Ah, shit. Money really was humanity’s weakness, wasn’t it?

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

“Surprise!” 

Sophia stared blankly at the motley of Wards - annoyances - in the center of the communal room. They hadn’t decorated it much, just strung up a banner from two parts of the roof, across which ‘four years and counting’ was written in a flowery, almost cursive font, but still, they’d had a party for this. Of all things. 

They’d even bought a cake.

Missy, at the front of the pack, was probably the culprit. Dean, at least, knew her limits when it came to dealing with this sort of thing, and nobody else knew enough about her or particularly cared enough to try something this stupid. 

...Still. Ugh. For fuck's sake, what was it with people forcing her to be emotional and other bullshit lately? First Taylor, then that entire _hug_ thing that her therapist would no doubt crow about like a peacock, and now this? Couldn’t she get a _break_ from the sappy shit? Why couldn’t people just let her enjoy knocking the teeth out of gangbangers and criminals? Goddamn.

“Thanks,” Sophia drawled, monotone. Like the force of nature she was and unlike every other tween she’d been near, who would’ve probably deflated like a balloon with that sort of response, Missy managed to stand firm against the _scathing_ lack of fucks she had to give about a surprise ‘you survived four years of street-level child warfare’ party. “You shouldn’t have.”

Seriously, they shouldn’t’ve. 

Apparently, though, her response was enough for them, or at least enough to let them feel guilt free about going after the cake they’d bought like starving vultures. Sighing, Sophia pulled her mask from her face, dropping it on the table, alongside her arm-mounted crossbows, as she passed. The patrol had been boring other than a few incidents involving a homeless guy, two broken bottles, and three Merchants, and even then that fight had lasted all of about five seconds before everyone besides her and Velocity - who had been, in hindsight, _suspiciously_ quiet and restrained over the patrol - had been unconscious and ready for pickup by the local cops.

Reaching her bag, Sophia ducked down, unzipped it, and pulled out her phone. It was, like most people’s, a pretty standard WIGIT phone; based on tinkertech software, with some hardware designed after some of the early examples of tinkertech. It hadn’t copied it, nobody could do that, but they were distinct for having more processing power than most computers built in the last ten years, so it had to count for something. 

Flicking it on, Sophia thumbed through Parapet - nothing - then missed calls - also nothing - before, finally, texts. There were a few, one from her mom confirming her and Taylor’s next “date”, another from Emma, included within a picture of Taylor scrambling out of a car, Alan’s face lit up in mirth, Taylor’s ears almost noticeably pink from something he likely said. 

The second before she was about to turn it off, maybe get a piece of cake and ignore Dennis, it beeped. A new text, from Taylor - they’d swapped numbers during her first visit to the house - and... eugh. What the fuck was wrong with her? Did she really text like that? Why did she put three eggplant emojis at the end of the text? There were more goddamn emojis than text, and, no. You know what, that wasn’t going to stand.

> _Are you fucking damaged? Type like a normal person_.

There, that should—

> _no i’m bored bb :[_

Oh my god. Fucking hell.

> _Then find something interesting to do_.

Another beep.

> _i’m being bullied by a cape [img]_

...Why the fuck was _Victoria Dallon_ sitting across from Taylor?

> _oops lol brb one sec_

Okay, so maybe she wasn’t about to get a response to that question. Great.

“Who’re you texting?” Missy asked, drawing Sophia’s attention away from the idling text screen. She was still mostly in costume, albeit without her visor, and had taken for herself a corner piece, balancing the disposable plate on one hand as she used a fork to dig into the cake with the other. “A boyfriend, maybe? You don’t talk about romantic interests.”

...Huh. Maybe that could work here, too. It worked on Terry, for sure, and Emma was startled enough by it to probably set a pretty good benchmark. People were looking at her too, curious, especially Dennis. Maybe this would get him to stop staring at her ass when he thought she didn’t notice? 

Fuck it, in for a penny. The best part about it is that she wouldn’t even be lying, so Dean would be just as clueless. Get fucked.

“A girlfriend, actually.”

Dennis stumbled, dropping his plate of cake onto the ground. Carlos froze, mid-bite, Chris just smiled serenely towards her before going back to his own cake, Dean stared at her in a mix of bewilderment and shock, which, just, _god_ was that fucking satisfying. 

“Huh, okay,” Missy said, not missing a beat, because she was Missy and Sophia was genuinely sure she would verbally plow through anything that got in her way, social norms or not. “What’s her name?”

“Taylor.”

“Do you like her?” Missy asked, looking up, wide-eyed and careful. Something about that question felt... weighted. 

Sophia shrugged, pushing down on the abrupt pulse of nervousness. “I find her insufferable and I still agreed to date her, what does that say?” That wasn’t even a lie.

It seemed that was the correct answer, or at least a good one, because Missy lit up in a smile. “That’s nice. Do you want some cake?”

Glancing at the still-frozen Dennis - which was its own sort of immensely satisfying thing - Sophia shrugged.

“Sure, I could go for some cake.” 


	7. A-TRACK 1.4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor burns something, Sophia burns herself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song credit: Hozier - Arsonist's Lullabye

Finishing a project always felt like a victory, a hit of endorphins, happy juice that swirled around in the empty cavern that was her skull. It still, to a point, _was_ like that, looking down at the finished Ahab in her hand still felt like she’d overcome arbitrary odds to make something _important_ , but the feeling was weighted, heavy. This was a killer’s weapon, it had no other purpose, no other _use_ than to kill or maim. She could’ve argued the opposite for her other weapons, her darts and javelins could be used to take apart defences, but not Ahab, not with its refined propulsion system and disregard for conventional physics.

Pressing the button, Ahab folded into itself silently, leaving her with an unusually heavy length of metal the size of a television remote and about the thickness of one of those spray deodorant canisters. The entire form was sleek now, round and polished to a sheen as all of her other javelins had been. The only thing that really set Ahab apart was what was inside of it, which nobody could see, and the more sophisticated propulsion system at its butt end, meant to actually properly guide the thing rather than indiscriminately explode and throw it in one direction. 

Rolling the collapsed javelin around in her hand, Taylor flicked the switch that sat on the opposite side of the front buttons. For a short moment, nothing happened, before finally, the javelin began to heat up, a low churning warmth that dissolved into aching, frostbite-worthy cold as heat ebbed and flowed. Rolling it around, she pressed her thumb back into the front button, extended it out to its full length again, and walked the length of her basement over to the cardboard boxes at the far other side. With almost morbid care, she leaned forward and slowly pushed the tip into the pile of cardboard, watched as it phased through with no resistance, accompanied by a small trail black-purple ash-like smoke curling around where the two materials intersected, rising loosely into the air before dispersing harmlessly into nothing. 

Taylor pulled the javelin back, flicked the switch back off and collapsed it once again.

Walking back over to her workbench, she dropped Ahab to her left, away from her pile of collapsed javelins. She didn’t want to get them mixed up or something. Her other projects stared back up at her, almost judgingly; she’d spent every single cent of those three hundred dollars on materials, and none of it had gone to waste. She’d finished Ahab, she had her throwing axe - surprisingly difficult to make, maybe she had gotten too reliant on sticks with pointy things at one end - built and ready for combat trials. She even made two more yellowjackets and three other darts: one which grew larger the farther she threw it, one which had an odd, non-newtonian property to it that made it sharper the harder it impacted something - she wasn’t even sure _how_ she made the damn thing, most of that night was a blur - and one with her... this would make fourth attempt to recreate containment foam filling a similar syringe-like glass belly. 

Shutting her eyes, Taylor breathed. She was ready, as equipped as she could possibly be. She had a ‘date’ in a day, her parents were still planning their anniversary vacation - which she had managed to get herself out of going along for - and she’d even gotten the chance to put more than a few hours into tinkering because her mother had obligations at the university - something about updated protocols to defend against parahuman threats; apparently, someone held a university in New York hostage and the international coverage had security experts rattling their weapons for more stringent safety measures - and her father had been called down to the union building to do some overtime as a result of a new flood of shipping requests.

She couldn’t fight the smile that forced itself onto her face. She wasn’t fully restocked, and those three-hundred dollars had only gone far enough to replenish resources she had since stripped the house - as far as she could without notice, anyway - bare for. There was a definite need for a revenue stream, one that in her near future would have to be addressed. She’d heard... _rumours_ , for lack of a better term, about Toybox and other Tinker collectives, ways to hand off tech for surplus money, resources, even other tech, but she felt uncomfortable about it. Toybox, for all that certain Tinkers thought them necessary, weren’t well-liked; they had a policy of selling to everyone, and most people who bought from them were warlords or criminal elements. There was that entire controversy less than five months ago about them selling to resurgent white nationalists in South Africa, leading to the literal _burning_ of a not-insignificant amount of Pretoria when their attempted coup went belly up. 

Not to mention she wasn’t exactly a Tinker who could just... tinker her way into getting a call with them. Her specialty was restrictive, good, sure, but restrictive in ways some of the more general ones weren’t. She couldn’t just figure out how to hotwire a connection to whatever people used to contact Toybox, it was so far outside of her specialty even her own power was pulling blanks. Well, mostly, it was giving her a few ideas on having network-connected projectiles that could learn and adjust to hit things, but it was vague, indistinct, nothing like the intensely visceral ideas that crawled into her head every so often.

None of this even took into account how she’d have to be certain that they weren’t just going to hoodwink her or kill her. She knew the risks of being a Tinker, knew them _viscerally_ well. She’d climbed out of the haze of her abuse and had been faced with the knowledge that she was something people wanted to _possess_ , wanted to own and use to turn out an endless surplus of tech. She wasn’t stupid, she was _paranoid_ , she’d done everything in her power to avoid connecting her civilian identity to her cape one, kept her scavenging to sheet metal, with enough consistency that nobody who saw her picking the stuff up actually thought she was a Tinker, just someone with a fondness for workshopping. It wasn’t even a lie, she did enjoy the feeling of working metal, it resonated with her, but...

No. These weren’t problems she could face right now. She’d need someone to get her into contact with Toybox, and the only other person who knew her cape identity was the person she was faking being in a relationship with and who, as far as she could tell, was _interested_ in capes, but not someone who could get her those connections. 

Taking in a breath, Taylor steeled herself. She could deal with that later, for now? She had to _plan_.

* * *

[4 of 7]

[ _Now Playing..._ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2Kc8WSwjq8)

* * *

She had scoped the place out a few weeks ago, found it mostly on accident. She’d seen a convoy of trucks, bedecked in the sort of confederate and racist militia iconography that defined the average moron who belonged to the Empire, arrive at the little shack of a warehouse, bringing with them tarped boxes. She’d never gone back to check what it was, drugs or guns, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that it _existed_ , that nobody had caught onto the big fuck-off convoys of cars covered in racist memorabilia coming and going from it. 

The reason why she hadn’t hit it yet was because something about the entire situation felt just generally _off_. The warehouse itself was located in Pleasant Acre, the former industrial heart of Brockton. A bit of a boomtown - boom community? - for the eighties, it had drawn in a good portion of Brockton’s current population and had been the target of a pretty flush cash flow that had dried up like a creek in a drought when capes and Endbringers had come around and reshuffled the world’s priorities. Still, for all that a lot of Pleasant Acre was mostly decrepit, it wasn’t like people didn’t live or work in it, there were some still-functioning industrial jobs left and some were even close to the warehouse itself.

No, nothing about the situation smelled right. Someone would’ve noticed, and someone would’ve ratted, but nobody had, and as far as she could tell, nobody had any inclination to. It made her feel like this place was more important, something right between everyone’s noses, a depot that existed, almost broadcasted its existence, but everyone who knew about it kept mum. Money, then, must’ve been traded around, and not any small amount of it; enough that it kept everyone off their backs, maybe under the guise of something unrelated to the Empire, sure, but definitely something that was illegal.

That or the cops themselves were being paid off to look the other way, and it hurt to say that it wasn’t entirely unlikely. Brockton’s police force had a long and sordid history with bigotry, racist attacks, jailing of black men, shooting unarmed civilians, claiming they thought they were capes, threats. Nothing about the Brockton Bay Police Force made her trust them not to take the cash and turn the other cheek, even if they knew it was the Empire.

So she had waited, and waited, and _itched_ to go down there and burn the place to the ground, but she had waited. 

Good things, obviously, come to those who wait, even herself.

She’d noticed over her period of waiting that while the inflow into the warehouse was pretty constant, there was close to no outflow. Nothing that went into the warehouse came out, and while she’d seen money trade hands once or twice, whatever they were packaging away in there, boxes in blue tarps, was either not of use yet, or was going to be used as excess resources, a stockpile. If it was drugs, even pretty cheap stuff like weed, the amount she’d seen them put in there alone would be enough to justify burning it down at this point. If it was the more expensive stuff, even better, and if it was guns? Well, she’d be putting a dent in them.

The gang itself, this time. Not their grunts, or the racist frat boys who now hesitated before they went out, who knew that she could always be there, waiting. No, she would hurt the _Empire_ , she would hurt everyone associated with them, the Herren, the _Clan._

Her heart thudded in her ears, fingers tense around the lip of the roof. She had to time this right, they might come in and out but they’d gotten sloppy, lazy. People didn’t sit around to keep watch anymore, they all went in to make sure their product was packed away in as little time as possible. Impatient worker bees, buzzing to-and-fro. It would be a close shave, for certain, she guessed she had maybe fifteen seconds to block the door before someone would come out to get the next box, with some _significant_ deviation due to a slightly staggered work pattern. 

She had to be lucky, she had to be _quick_. 

From the distance she was at, the people packing shit away weren’t really identifiable. One was bald, and her eyes could just barely pick up on some ink along his skull, while the other had short black hair and enough stubble on his face to be seen from a distance away. She was pretty sure it was only two tonight, which meant fewer examples, but it made her job significantly easier.

Baldie crept into view, walking slowly, each step heavy and plodding. Behind him, Stubble was the same, holding up the other end of the tarped box, wobbling a bit from the weight of it. Her breathing slowed, she tensed, watched as they walked across the short length of pavement towards the door they’d propped open with a small bit of rock. Step-by-step-by-step-by—

 _Now_. 

She dropped from her perch - the roof of a long-abandoned 7-11 - the second Stubble started to pass in through the threshold, landing with a harsh squeal from the servos along her legs. She reached down as she sprinted, yanking a stone into her hand from the dusty ground, her power soaking into it, the line between it and her furthest reach flickering into focus in a way that wasn’t quite vision. She sped up, her breath coming out as hard pants, tensed her arm, and _threw_ , the rock sailing through the air in a long, unimpeded arc, slamming harshly into the rock that was blocking the door, the strength of her throw enhanced by the servos along her arms, hitting it hard enough to knock the stone free. The door, big and bulky, carried on by gravity and its own weight, slammed shut.

Her newest confoam dart was in her fingers, plucked from her belt, a breath before the door slammed shut. She skid to a halt, breathing in harshly to get the oxygen required to keep her hand steady, and threw that too, right at the door. It hit, shattered along its front, its contents starting first as a milk-coloured fluid before violently beginning to turn into foam, bubbling and frothing as it bloomed, widening until the door itself was completely covered alongside the wall. For a moment, she almost thought the foam was going to fail, she had only tested the concoction once and it _still_ wasn’t what she needed, not truly, but just as she was about to start reaching for other weapons, the foam began to turn grey and hard. Porous and dense like rock, the petrified foam hardened into place, its new, immense weight even making the door creak a little before everything stabilized.

Keeping to a jog, Taylor reached to the other side of her belt and pulled out a Firebug. This was another one of those creations she’d made out of anger, or on a whim, and had been horrified by the results. It was basically Tinkertech thermite with the capacity to spread, contained within a metal dart that was primed to shatter upon impact if the fat end hit or explode like a grenade if the needle pierced through something. It was actually nearly identical to the propellant she used to fuel her rocket javelins, but with a few tweaks that made the resulting flame spread like a brushfire. 

She didn’t even rely on her Thinker power for this one, didn’t need to. She underhanded it, let it spin like a coin deciding her fate, before it hit the metal sheeting of the shanty warehouse and exploded like a firecracker, the flame catching on the metal immediately, crawling up the wall like a beast possessed. The main thing about the Firebug, and the propellant, was that its unique properties would burn out within about thirty seconds, leaving behind normal fire—it had something to do with how the compound she made was suspended in the plasma of the fire, it gave it its weird behaviour and ability to chew through metal. 

Her jog led her around to the back entrance, the only way out, now that she had buried the door in porous stone. She slowed to a halt, breathing a bit harshly, her head spinning, but the world quickly reasserting itself after a few more moments of rest. Pulling at her lower back, Taylor withdrew a pair of knives, each one just sharp throwing knives, sure, but it would be enough. She didn’t need her javelins, even if she brought them, and it would do to be more conservative with what she used tonight. She just didn’t really want to exacerbate her resource issues if she couldn’t help it.

As if on cue, the first guy bolted out through the back door barely a few seconds afterwards. He stumbled, patting down a pant leg that was smouldering, and didn’t even see her from her place just to the left of the door. His back was wide open, she could even kill him if she wanted, not that she particularly did. She launched herself forward, shoulder-checking Stubble in his sweaty back, sending him onto his front a couple feet forwards, before hopping back a step and hurling the knife in her right hand directly into the palm of his left, piercing it through and nailing him right to the ground.

He screamed, bucked against it, but didn’t manage to pull the knife free of his hand or the concrete beneath it. 

Turning, Taylor caught sight of Baldie. She was right, to whatever ends, his head was covered in an eclectic mix of swastikas and 8s and all the other gang tag shit she was getting kinda tired of seeing. He was standing there, frozen, skinny body locked as, behind him, blue tarps caught fire against the unyielding onslaught of her firebug, burning wildly. 

“You have two choices,” Taylor said, not quite keeping the fondness out of her voice. Her heart pounded in her ears, a consequence of the exercise or her excitement, she couldn’t be too sure. “One, you can burn to death in there, that fire is currently Tinkertech and it will eat through you like toilet paper. Two, you can come out here, stand still, and be pinned to the ground.”

Baldie blinked once, twice, his face growing ashen, harsh. He stared at her, a wild look in his eyes. “Do you know what you did?”

“Burned down one of your caches, probably. They found a few of those in Texas,” Taylor replied easily, watching the fire get closer, gnawing at the ground, eager to bite and spread and turn everything to ash.

Baldie stumbled forward, hissing as the fire licked at his arm. He wasn’t quite through the threshold yet, but Taylor still slipped the other knife into her good hand. “You have no idea what you’ve done,” he said thickly, nervously. “You can’t even begin—”

Something far in the back of the warehouse exploded, a dull, ballistic noise that rattled not only the building, but herself as well. Little holes exploded across the sheet-metal surface of the building, shrapnel holes—it was guns, just as she expected. Baldie toppled forward, a scream exploding out of his mouth as a pair of raised red burns appeared across his legs, molten slag apparently catching on his skin. He fell, same as the other, face-down into the grass just far enough away to assuage her concerns about him dying from proximity or shrapnel, and before he could reach to grab his leg, to paw at the wound, she’d put a knife through the same leg that had been burnt.

His screams raised in pitch, into a wail of shrieking agony. 

She felt no sympathy. 

“You whore!” Baldie screamed out after, apparently, taking a little break to catch his breath, to stop being a _bitch_ . “You fucking _whore_ , they’ll fucking kill you for this, rip you to shreds, I’ll fucking relish the moment Hookwolf bends you over you fucking sl—”

Her boots met his mouth, toes covered in steel and the servos enhancing her kick just enough to jar his head back. She heard him swallow his own teeth. 

Taylor smiled placidly, glanced behind her as the distant sound of sirens picked up, a dull roar of noise. Someone had probably called in the fire by now, if nothing else because it was dark and fire wasn’t really supposed to spread like that. It was only the fact that she didn’t want to have to meet a paramedic again and get chewed out for ‘unreasonable violence’ for the second time that she wasn’t putting another knife into one of his arms, or maybe his shoulder. Somewhere painful, somewhere that would leave phantom pains, even after it had been long healed. 

Turning, Taylor glanced lingeringly as the fire chewed, ate, burned higher and higher. The explosions were frequent now, concussive staccatos that rattled through the building, occasionally managing to penetrate the sheet metal exterior, but not as frequently as it had near the start. The entire warehouse was enveloped, but it wasn’t spreading anymore; it’d burned through the suspended thermite, and could no longer feed on the metal, instead only on the plastic tarps and whatever other garbage or wood they had inside.

Baldie groaned, mouth thick with blood. Stubble just laid completely still, unmoving for all but the shallow rise and fall of his chest. 

Crouching down, Taylor reached for Baldie, if only to ensure he bled down his chin instead of down his throat, climbing back to her feet once she’d turned his head enough to stop him from drowning in his own blood. 

The sirens screamed, growing ever-closer. She could almost hear the rattle of wheels against potholed streets, the long approach of emergency vehicles and cops rushing to protect fascists from what they _deserve_. 

Before Taylor could think better of it, she turned and ran.

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Watching the Heberts drive back down the driveway, Sophia followed them with her eyes, watched as the beat-up, coffee-stained hatchback pulled onto the main road, lights cutting through the contrasting dim of eleven o’clock in the middle-end of January. 

Breathing out through her nose in a tired sigh, Sophia turned back, walked through the threshold of her front door, shutting it behind her. Her mother was asleep, had been since she’d gotten home at nine from a long workday, and while Terry was awake, he’d spent the last hour making sure Paula got to sleep, so he probably wasn’t going to be impressed if she kept him awake.

Which kinda just left her bed, didn’t it? It was eleven on a Friday and she really was considering just, fuckin’ going to bed. How’d she become so lame? Honest to god. 

Shaking her head, Sophia twisted the front door lock shut, bolted the other two, and made sure the chain was in place as well. Checking to make sure the security system was still on - once it hadn’t been, and once had been enough to make sure she always checked it - she, begrudgingly, walked her way through the main hall, past the kitchen, down the stairs and into the basement—her basement, to a certain degree. Nobody else really used it besides her, though Paula had shown some interest in hanging around down there, and she wasn’t about to refuse her baby sister that much. 

Gumbo snuffled a bit from his seat on the couch when she finally made it down there, perking up but, with the sort of lazy, floppy behaviour that she had come to define him with, he laid back down no more than a few seconds later. She was tempted to bury her face in his coat, hug him tight to her body, he’d understand, he was trained to, but pushed down on the urge to do it. She was just... _stressed_ , for no real reason, it was just one of those sorts of days and it made her temper a thin wire that would snap at a moment’s notice. 

Walking into the hallway, Sophia passed by the guest bedrooms and shouldered her own open, catching sight of her phone in the center of her bed, gently ruffling the otherwise immaculate sheets. The indicator at its top blinked, a bright red light, and she just hoped that it wasn’t another one of those abominations Taylor texted her. There had been three since she’d done it back then, all with gratuitous eggplant usage and emojis that she didn’t know existed until recently. 

Why, exactly, the child of an English professor typed with the same sort of inaccurate ease as a third-grader was beyond her, but if it was to spite her own mother - something she doubted, Taylor seemed kinda reliant on her Mom - then it clearly wasn’t working too well. 

Plucking her phone from her bed, Sophia drummed in the required eight-digit number that all of the PRT-issued WIGIT phones came with. The first thing that stuck out was the PRT warning, which she swiped to in a heartbeat. Arson, great, lovely, not too far from her home either, apparently not just that, but arson on a _fucking building full of explosive ammunition and weapons_. Great. Fantastic. Suspects included Shrike - due to the state of the people found at the scene - and, of course, who else but Gambit, the local ragtag villain group who had a fetish for pyromania. 

Fucking Gambit. Seriously, it was bad enough that it was run by _Grue_ , but the fact that it had both Circus - grab bag, some sort of spatial-sense Thinker ability, a pocket space tied to touching objects, and pyrokinesis - and the recently christened Spitfire - lazy name, but capable of melting _fucking concrete_ with the flame she produced from her mouth - just kinda made a shit situation worse. It used to _just_ be Circus and Grue, they made for a pretty decent thievery-salt-the-earth duo and were nearly impossible to take down with Grue’s darkness not impeding Circus’ spatial sense, letting the clown freak fight blind while everyone else couldn’t, but add onto that a high-level pyrokinetic blaster with synergies with Circus and, well, they’d become a lot more important over the last few months, that much was for certain. 

...Which just left the other suspect, Taylor. Fan-fucking-tastic. Two people were found speared to the ground with knives, great, one without teeth, which was fine, Nazis getting hit in the mouth is kinda worth it, but neither were able to talk - one because he kept demanding a lawyer, the idiot, and the other because, y’know, no teeth - and the only evidence to support Shrike’s possible inclusion was the fact that they were stabbed with tinkertech knives, which could still be Circus. It wasn’t like Gambit didn’t _use_ Tinkertech when they got access to it, it was just that Shrike had an M.O. and this kinda fit.

Shit, she couldn’t even ask Taylor if that was her, because this was all classified shit and none of it would make it to the news. Great. Fun. Fuck, if Taylor _joined_ Gambit, they were going to have words.

Whatever, she was working herself up. Flicking off of the PRT newscast, past the few notifications for Parapet, and onto her messages, she was met with... well, not much. None from Taylor, or her handler, or any of the other Wards. Emma, at least, had sent something, maybe she’d text back, distract herself, just like the therapist ordered. Thumbing onto the screen, Sophia froze as the first out of two images loaded. It was Taylor in a clearly professional shot, wearing pretty generic sports-wear, a crop-top like thing, some short shorts that clung to her legs, with a windbreaker thrown over both of them. 

The first thought that came to mind was, _oh my god, Taylor Hebert has abs_. The second thought wasn’t so much something you could explain in words and instead expressed itself by the sudden lurch of her arm as she fucking chucked her damn cellphone right back down into her bedspread with enough force to make the thing bounce. 

Breathing a bit heavily, Sophia stared at the phone, which almost seemed to be judging her. 

Why the fuck did she do that. 

Why.

Reaching back out, Sophia plucked the phone, tapped on the image to make it minimize and get out of her sight, and did the same for the second picture, another photo of Taylor in decent looking sportswear, though the windbreaker and long track pants covered up _way_ more this time around, thankfully. Scrolling up to get context, Sophia swallowed a groan of annoyance.

> _Thought you might like to see Taylor’s first photoshoot ;) Don’t worry, I asked permission before sending these._

Goddammit, Emma.


	8. SIDE-TRACK PUNITION.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aisha can't stop running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This includes a scene involving an attempt at (admittedly parahuman-enabled) racial violence and racism itself, as well as someone's trigger event. Please read with caution.

Pushing herself over the lip of the fence, Aisha landed in a crouch on the pavement, not even bothering to keep the grin off of her face.

She’d been scoping out the wall for a while now, but it wasn’t until last night that she’d thought to do anything about it. Tagging was risky business when you preach for peace, especially when you do it in Nazi territory, and she’d been reluctant to put anything on a wall even close to where some of the hotspots were. However, considering someone just blew up one of their warehouses less than ten hours ago, Aisha was pretty sure they were a bit _preoccupied_.

Now, whether or not that warehouse was Shrike’s work or Gambit’s, well, she didn’t honestly care. Nazis lost a lot of shit in that fire, apparently, enough guns packed away in one place to get an investigation about it called up. Federal goddamn police were actually mucking their way down to good ol’ Brockton to see what they could do about hostile weapon stockpiles. They’d do jack fucking shit because she was pretty sure most of the national police force and shit was in the pocket of every racist they could find on a map, but, hey, it’d bring just enough heat to make them squirm.

Fucking up a Nazi stockpile full of assault weaponry was a good deed regardless of who did it. Well, if a Nazi did it, then it’s a fuck up and you should laugh about it, but whether it was a girl who impaled Nazis all the time or if it was a pair of girls who set fire to shit all the time - plus the shadow dude, can’t forget about the least interesting member of Gambit - Aisha personally didn’t think it mattered. Fucking them up was a moral positive, in the end, and another step for the cause.

Creeping over to the wide, tall concrete wall, Aisha shucked her backpack and unzipped it. Shoving aside all the garbage her teachers foisted off on her like ungrateful morons who didn’t know what their jobs were, Aisha reached down and started piling her good ol’ cans of Rusto out on the ground beside her. She had enough colours available, that was for sure, and she had a perfectly clear image of what she was about to draw in her head. It wouldn’t do to take her black book everywhere, if even one person attributed all those tags to her, not only would she be completely fucking murdered by the local Nazi population, but she’d also probably get arrested, and everyone knew what cops were like around black girls who didn’t respect them.

Grabbing her pair of brushes next, Aisha stepped back and took a long look at her canvas. It was tall, the side of a concrete brick-like building not too far off from Pleasant Acre. Nazis hung around it a lot, not this wall in particular but the front, flexing and showing off like morons. She wasn’t exactly sure what the relevance of the place was, outside of being a meeting destination for all the white boys in her class who wanted to start taking up genocide as a pastime, but it got tons of foot traffic, which meant they’d _all_ see her shit when she was done.

Now, speaking honestly, Aisha had never really expected herself to be an artist. Seemed kinda fucking boring on the onset, quaint and something a teacher might foist off on her to try to get a leash around her throat, something to keep her bound. Really, though, it was the opposite, she _thrived_ on it, expressed herself, and got to play double duty as a menace to the racists that lived on her street by tagging over their gang symbols with shit like paintings of black girls or rainbows or the hundred other things Nazis responded violently to. She’d actually seen some dumbass skinhead try to hit one of her paintings with a fuckin’ bat, like that’d do anything to the brick facade she’d sprayed over. Moron.

The _shika-shika-shika_ of her first can was always a sort of relief, grounding her. It was like the pistol firing, the start of her sprint. She’d have to do this fast, not sloppily, she’d tagged enough that people had noticed her style and it would do nothing good for her rep if she was _sloppy_ , but she’d have to be quick. There was risk enough being a black girl on Pine Street, let alone being a black girl defacing their favourite bit of property.

Her first spray was a long curve, a line to define the front of the face. People acted like using a brush was a crutch, but she thought otherwise; people just didn’t want to fuck with the tools of one’s trade outside of painting over shit, but she knew better. She sharpened those damn edges, made the bumps and curves that defined the profile of a face looking sides pop, made it clear and distinct. She shook again, filled in hard around the cheekbones, pausing to swap for a darker brown, closer to black, to give further definition, little sprays to give contrast. She smoothed and blended with her brush like she was doing makeup, like this was her face she was painting and not some nondescript black girl with no identity outside of one being used in defiance of the shit people who lived in the shithole that was Brockton.

White, next, she got the eye, then coloured in above it with the sharpest black she’d been able to buy. Thick eyelashes, pouty lips, nothing a white girl without a suction cup and a black sharpie could call their own. Her next sprays were surgical, colouring in the skin, warm browns and darker ones, getting the contrast, making it clear just who—

Someone behind her clapped.

Aisha flinched, can dropping from her fingers as she spun around. There were four of them in total, three blocking off the way to the fence she’d climbed over, and one at the front. He was tall, wearing a long-sleeved red sweater beneath a black metal chest-plate, black pants, black-and-red boots, and he had a mask. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Like a chimp smearing its own shit on the wall,” the blonde cape said, his voice a low timber. He stared at her work for a moment, face curling into a sneer. “Trying to make a point, are we?”

Shit, shit, Aisha, fucking _think_. What did Brian say about Empire capes? Right, strike out all the girls. There was, uh, Krieg, who had black hair, so not this fucker, there was Hookwolf, whose appearance she knew off heart, there was Victor who was—was, shit. Blonde hair, black metal breastplate, intimidating figure, simple domino mask, spoke with a completely neutral southern accent, the rough Texan edge worked down to something between the Brockonite accent and the one he’d clearly originally had.

Fuck. _FUCK_.

“You know what’s the worst, too?” Victor said, almost frankly. He was leaning against the wall now, eyes narrowed on her. “The fact that some fucking piece of shit Tinker mutilated one of my best men, knocked out his front teeth, fucked up his world. Blew up our damn supplies, made a _mockery_ out of us. The fucking degenerates under Lung are pushing in on our territory, the Merchants are too, and to top it all off, some fucking little _whore_ has been running around, putting up tags all over our shit when we’re not looking.”

Glancing behind her, Aisha could just barely see the other fence. It was unguarded, thankfully, but... she wouldn’t make it in time, Victor was too close.

“So, you know what I thought? ‘Well, might as well get some of the boys and make an example of her’, after all, we can’t let people go thinking we’re easy bait, can we? It wasn’t hard to track you, you’re hardly subtle.” Victor smiled, a cold, vile thing, all perfectly-white teeth.

Aisha swallowed thickly. Fuck, fuck.

Victor pushed himself off the wall and started to approach, step-by-step, confident. “You know what else? I don’t even think I’ll let them get your dirty blood on their hands,” he explained, sounding almost giddy. “No, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to _rip_ the fucking artistry out of your head and use it for myself. You’ll be a good example, I think, of the benevolence of our cause. Maybe next time they’ll keep you fucking animals on a leash.”

It was hard to explain the sensation. It built up, a gradual pull against some part of her brain, a souring headache that was almost ignorable if not for the fact that she was focusing on it. It grew in intensity, building like a pressure, pushing against her mind, her focus. It was how it ripped the ideas from her mind, how the mental image of that black girl, lips pouted, looking imperial, like a fucking _queen_ , blurred and rippled, torn from her mind. It was the way that the horror set in, a sudden amnesia, an inability to focus on drawing, on ideas, they all went blurry, churned, dripped like tears from her skull. Being taken from her, going into the hands of people who hated her, who held her down, stripped her wings for feathers.

She scrambled back, her legs giving out, laughter rattling out from someone. She could feel their eyes like burns, the way Victor kept getting closer, kept following her. She screamed, the pain spiking for a moment, raw and chafing against the grooves in her head. She tried to get away, tried to scramble away _but he just kept laughing and pushing and—_

Her freedom, being taken. They were watching her, laughing, jeering as Victor stood no more than five feet away from her, the headache growing more extreme, intense, confusion setting in, terror accompanying it. She didn’t want it, she wanted to draw, she liked painting, it was freeing it was her and he kept pulling and ripping and her mind it _hurt hurt hurt hu_ —

Something snapped, cracked. She had the impression of something come over her, like she was splitting in two, like she was falling, like she was hurtling towards a round, blue dot, focused and _speaking and_ —

Pushing herself up from the ground, Aisha scrambled backwards. Victor was on the ground too - how? - and only now coming too, a groan on his lips as he pulled himself up to a stand. The other three looked spooked.

Something in her mind twisted, _clicked_. Victor was a beacon of light, a dot in the shade, a distinct entity in the world around her. It wasn’t sight, couldn’t be called that, but it was relative to her, a sense that he was there, and that nothing else was near him. The dot spoke to her, she wasn’t sure how, but it did, and with it, ideas came, a slow trickle of _steals skills,_ and _needs to replenish or continue using them_ , and other abstract ideas that had no place in her mind, intrusive thoughts that banged at the front of her skull.

She reached out to the dot, pressed on it with fingers-that-weren’t fingers, the dot wavering in her vision-that-wasn’t-vision. The panic jumped back into her throat, the need to do something, to stop him, to _fix this_ , and she pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and _pushed_ until something in the dot snapped and it spasmed wildly. Victor staggered from his mid-stand, hand coming up to his head, a croak bellowing out through his lips.

“Th’fuck, wh’dyo do to me?” He asked, eyes glazed, hazy. “Why can’t I? How do I use my powers? How? You _whore_ , what did you do?!”

Aisha didn’t know, _didn’t care_. She was turning, sprinting, the hollering behind her ignored, distant. Her fingers met the chain of the fence and she was up and over it in record time, her backpack abandoned. A loss she could deal with, she didn’t care, she needed to be out, to escape, to _get away_.

Her feet met concrete and she _ran_.

* * *

She wasn’t really sure how or when she got home. Her legs burned, her second vision-that-wasn’t-vision was blank, empty. Nobody here was like Victor, a cape, _like her_ , some part of her whispered. She jabbed her key into the door, turned the lock, pushed it open to the thick pungent smell of weed that clung to everything. Home sweet home, effectively. Mom didn’t seem to be around, but she also didn’t look around to check, it was just as likely she was getting fucked by Jeremy, her new dealer.

Passing through the cramped, dirty living room, Aisha walked along the length of the hall to the very back, her room. She pushed her door open, shut it behind her and walked the few feet to her bed, dropping face first down into it.

Fuck. She could barely _breathe_ , every bone and muscle in her body was little more than tense knots, tight aching restriction that made her fingers cramp. She tried to shut her eyes, to shut out the noise, the screaming in her skull, the urge to _hide hide hide_ , but it never abated, only got worse in the silence of her own head. Pushing herself back to her feet, Aisha slumped to her knees and plucked her sketchbook - black book sounded cooler, in her opinion - out from under her bed and nabbed one of the loose Crayola markers off the floor to go along with it. She’d lost her school supplies, but whatever.

Flipping to the first empty page, Aisha thought back to it, to the queen. Shakily, desperately, she tried to start out with a circle, set the framework, draw in big bulky colours, and... nothing. She stared down at the scribble that was her attempt at drawing a circle, at something she had managed to learn how to do years ago. Her mind was blank, flat, it looked like a toddler’s attempt at drawing a wheel, or someone trying to make a circle with their non-dominant hand. Ugly. No spirit. Just a mess.

“Aisha!” Mom’s voice boomed the length of the apartment, a screechy tinny that made her headache. “Aisha, get your ass over here! Your _school_ called.”

Had she even answered the phone when she did? Wouldn’t’ve she just been completely out on her ass with whatever new drug Jeremy hooked her on?

The Jeremy who was always just a little too close, a little too eager to find reasons to punish her, to hurt her. Mom didn’t care about school, she hadn’t ever, would never, it would make sense if it was Jeremy pushing her for this, pushing to get her vulnerable, weak, _cornered_.

“Aisha!”

She was packing clothes into her replacement bag from elementary school before she’d really mentally thought about doing it. There was no rhyme or reason to it, half of the shirts and pants and underwear she stuffed inside were dirty but not a whole lot of her shit ever was. Mom didn’t do laundry very often and the few times she’d tried herself she’d fucked something up and just never bothered to try again.

“Young lady!” Jeremy shouted, his voice rattling, booming. _Young lady_ , like the drug dealer appealed to a sense of propriety or professionalism when he spent most of his day in her mother’s bedroom. “You get out here right now! We have to talk about your misbehaviour.”

Her bag was too bloated, too packed tight, it’d basically explode the second she unzipped it but she didn’t care. Couldn’t. She just barely spent enough time to grab her phone - twenty percent battery, but whatever - and shouldered her way out the door of her room. Jeremy was there at the other end, staring heated daggers at her, and she ignored him, ignored the way him blocking the way into the living room set her teeth on edge, made her want to scream and claw and _kick_. She lashed one arm out, yanked on the door, throwing it out to the side with enough force to make the frame creak.

She heard him yell her name, a bellow of anger, but she was sprinting down the apartment hallway before she could process it, and then down the stairs, towards the main floor.

She had to be anywhere but here, anywhere at all.

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Brian knew something was wrong when he arrived at the apartment building. It was just a feeling, a deeply familiar one, the same sort of one he’d experienced when Aisha had texted him and he’d come in on one of his mother’s conquests staring at his younger sister with lurid focus. It was the atmosphere, a thick knot of tension that got worse as he climbed the three flights of stairs up to his mother’s floor, growing almost choking as he walked the stretch of long, unwashed hallway tile, the smell of sweat and smoke clinging to everything.

He didn’t even bother to knock when he got to the door, just slipped his hand around the knob, twisted and pushed. The apartment looked the same, for the most part, but...

“Aisha? You stupid child, did you fin—oh, Brian.” Mom stumbled out from the hallway, eyes glazed, unfocused, _high_. Not drunk, she wasn’t sloppy enough for that.

Setting his jaw, Brian stared at the woman who gave birth to him. “Where’s Aisha?”

His mother snorted. “How the fuck should I know? She ran off yesterday after disrespecting Jeremy.”

Not _again_. “Any idea why?”

“Nope,” his mother popped the ‘p’, before giggling helplessly. “She never tells me _aaaanything_. Or Jeremy. She should be a better daughter.”

Breathing in slowly, Brian passed by his mother, walking back towards Aisha's room. He ignored her snapping at him about respect, didn’t _care_ , and pushed his way in. Her room had been ransacked was his first assumption, but that wasn’t quite right either. It was messier, yes, and the drawers were open and pulled away, but there were gaps, places where clothes had been the last time he had visited a few days ago. Sizable ones, at that.

Frowning, Brian glanced around. Her spare bag was missing too, had she gone out for a sleepover and just opted not to tell his mother? It would make sense, she’d done it before, but... His eyes narrowed in on the book, a sketchbook, by the looks of it. Walking over, he flipped the thing open and felt himself get a little colder, harder. These were good, _really_ good, done with basic markers by the looks of it but they were all stylized and far beyond what he thought Aisha could do, artistry wise. She’d never shared this part of herself with him.

Something about them bothered him, were familiar. He thumbed through it, page after page after page before he came on a series of what looked like tags. Tags he had seen on the building next to Emily’s house when Alex - Circus - had invited him over to hang out with the two of them. Tags like the ones that had been popping up around the city, usually closely following the Shrike. A fan, he’d assumed, someone with a good grasp on art and impact and a risky thing to do, to boot. She could’ve copied these but... no, the notes beside them were too detailed, the sketches too prototypal to be anything but the original versions.

He flipped to the latest page. There was an attempt at a circle, aborted, looking more like a scribble, sloppy and messy. Part of the page had been ripped, crinkled by tensed fingers. What had Aisha gotten herself into?

Shit, this might be more serious than he thought.

Tucking the book away, Brian turned and marched back out, shutting his sister’s door as he went. Mom was gone, probably back to her room with Jeremy, and he didn’t try to say goodbye to her, simply pushing out through the front door and making his way towards the stairwell. He knew a fair number of Aisha’s haunts, her friends, it’d take a while but he could look over them all, and maybe a few he thought she might be near.

If she was safe, just being bratty, that would be fine. Perfectly fine. Safety was paramount, for sure, and he didn’t really care if she was an ass to their mom. Sometimes, his mother really did deserve it, though he mostly thought her addiction was the issue, not the woman herself. Not that the two could be separated, she’d been hooked for such a long time that it wasn’t clear where the drugs started and where his mother ended.

No, he had to be sure, just in case.

* * *

It was close to seven by the time he finished looking, and there was nothing. Not a single sighting of Aisha, not from her friends - or even her _friends_ friends, who he had pushed into asking around, just to be sure - and she hadn’t been at any of the haunts she usually went when she was overwhelmed. She was missing, wholly and totally, and he knew for a damn fact that his mother would do precisely jack shit and his _father_ would try to take it over if he mentioned it. He'd even called her a few times, but it always went straight to voice mail. The phone was either dead or destroyed and he wasn't sure what would be worse.

Which, really, only left one option.

Alex picked up after a few rings. “Brian?” They asked groggily, sounding half-awake. “The fuck is up my dude?”

“I think I need to use some of the money,” he said, keeping his voice as level as he could.

There was a short burst of silence.

“Why?” Alex asked, sounding much more like Circus, much less like Emily’s mischievous partner.

Brian breathed in, tried to center himself. “Aisha’s gone missing, and I don’t think it’s because she didn’t care to tell anyone she was going to hang out with someone.”

“Alright,” there was no pause this time around, just acceptance. “I’ll wake Emily up and tell her. Should we gather somewhere? What do you even need the money for, anyway?”

Sighing in relief, Brian leaned against the bit of underpass he was under, listening to the cars hurtle over it, the canvas of tags and graffiti along the underside, so familiar looking now that he had context. “We’re going to see someone I met when I started out, she should be able to help. If you want to come along, you can, but come costumed and in something comfortable. We’ll probably be there for a while.”

* * *

The Palanquin gleamed in the dark, the rhythmic booming of music loud and hard to ignore. The nightclub itself was caught between two buildings, both boutiques of some sort, and both who turned their lights off come night time, leaving it the sole beacon in the dark for the street. The line was long, girls and guys anywhere from 14 to their late 40s lined up in a row, waiting for their chance to slip in and have some fun. It helped that the Palanquin was lax on who could get it and who couldn’t, you just needed ID to buy alcohol.

Glancing back at Circus and Spitfire, Brian nodded. He walked around the crowd, getting one jeer before the sight of his helmet made the person shut up. The skull that had been painted on the inside, white and bright against the black-tinted glass, it shut most people up when they saw it, and now was no different. Coming to a halt next to the bouncer, he waited until he was done telling off a gawky, blonde boy and telling him to go home.

“I’m here to see Tabby,” Brian said easily, fingers tensing around the bag he’d put a not-insignificant amount of money into.

The bouncer raised an eyebrow, glanced down at the bag. “Her fee?”

Brian nodded, jostling the bag for effect.

“The clown and gas-mask with you, then?”

Another nod.

“Right, go on in. Do not go to the dance floor, there’s a path that leads right up to the area where she’s in. If you cause trouble, you get fucked, we clear?”

“Crystal,” Brian grit out, trying not to sound as frustrated as he was.

Nevertheless, the bouncer stepped to the side, letting the three of them in.

Much like how the Palanquin outside was a tower of neons and light, the inside seemed to copy that. There were regions of sheer blackness, places carefully chosen to let the shadows soak in, the light framing the room in just the right way to leave the impression that it was only where the light was that anything existed. It was a neat effect, he personally thought, but he didn’t spend any time enjoying it, simply following the rules, keeping to the raised area that surrounded the dance floor and walking towards the long stretch of metal stairs that led up into the second.

Circus and Spitfire kept close to him, silent solidarity for what he was about to do. They had argued about money before, but neither of the two had said anything against his decision to put down more than a few thousand dollars on a cape neither of them had heard much about. Of course, most people knew that Tabby _existed_ , she did do jobs like these, but... well, very few people bothered to get to know her, or her goals.

The music was dampened significantly on the second floor, only letting some of the bass through, giving the space a detached feeling. On its own, the second floor was kinda boring, just long stretches of concrete floor with couches placed around, accompanied by tables. Some people were knocked out on them, likely from Newter, who he couldn’t see but knew generally hung around when Faultline’s crew wasn’t on a mission, and he found Tabby almost instantly, sequestered away in that godawful red leather chair that clashed with the otherwise pretty bland environment, placing her like a beacon, drawing everyone’s eye.

Tabby was a teenager, not much younger than him. Long blonde hair framed a tabby-cat themed half-mask that covered everything from her nose up. She wore a cat-suit, because of course she did, and it, much like the mask, was stylized with tabby cat patterns, though at the center, between her collarbone, the pattern was interrupted by a single stylized eye, white in colour and a strong contrast to the rest of her outfit.

Walking the length of the room, he met Tabby’s green eyes, which flicked between him and the bag of cash, before a lazy, smug smile slid across her face. “Heya, Broody.”

“Tabby,” Brian said, keeping his voice carefully blank, even if she knew he wasn’t even _close_ to that calm emotionally. “This is serious.”

For a moment, he almost thought she’d keep it up, try to get a rise out of him, before with an actual pout, she slumped. “You’re no fun,” she complained, reaching out with one hand, wiggling her fingers. “Give it here.”

He handed the bag over, which she quickly unzipped, glanced inside, then nodded, dropping it off to the side.

“Right, now that’s confirmed, what can I do for you, Grue?” Her posture had shifted slightly, from the slouched, almost cat-like way she’d splayed over the chair, now to a more refined one, back straight, leg slightly folded over the other, one elbow pressed into the arm of the chair, fist beneath her chin.

Pulling the sketchbook free, Brian handed that over, which Tabby immediately began to wordlessly thumb through. “My sister’s gone missing. I can’t find her, I looked literally _everywhere_ I know she’s been, and... I think she got into some shit.”

Seaglass eyes glanced up from him, barely hidden from behind the edge of the sketchbook. “No kidding,” Tabby commented, eyes flicking back down as she kept paging through the sketchbook.

“I need your help finding her.” Brian continued, fighting the urge to do it on his own, knowing better.

Tabby hummed, finally getting to the end, freezing. She hesitated for a few moments, running her thumb over the messy circle.

“Yeah, I think you do,” Tabby said, after another moment of pause. “I’m in. Money’s being kept, I’ll have to put myself off the roster for an upcoming outing to Vegas, which is a shame, but... yeah. I think you do.”

Brian breathed out, mostly in relief.

“Let's find your sister.”


	9. A-TRACK 1.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor holds someone's hand, Sophia has a meeting.

The atmosphere at school was tense, a taut wire ready to snap. It was the way people hunched, the way they kept to tight groups with valleys between them and the next. It was the way that some of the Empire kids had stopped wearing gang colours, the new security guards placed around the doors of the school, the tension between the groups. Sure, none of the gangs ever really got along, but now it was... _more_ , an underlying intensity that made her skin crawl.

She knew better than to think she wasn’t responsible for it. Not all of it, she knew, but she’d been the one to light the fire and it had just spread from there. She’d kept up to date on it, the Empire rallies they’d had to disperse over the weekend, the constant posturing, the sudden disappearance of Victor from the public displays, Cass— _Othala_ notably alone, the pictures she’d seen displaying her with a stiff posture, tense shoulders, fingers tight knots at her hips.

Nothing like she remembered her being. She looked violent, hateful. Ready to lash out and hurt something without a target.

“You’re thinking too loudly,” Emma said, voice a bit thin. “Wanna talk about it?”

Taylor glanced up to meet her eyes, shifting the knuckles along her jaw to drop her hand back down to the table. Emma was seated across from her, desks pressed together for the impromptu study hall with Mr. Gladly's absence. She looked strained, stressed, which wasn’t a surprise, everyone did. “Just thinking about how we probably shouldn’t be at school,” Taylor replied, glancing back down at the slew of papers scattered across her desk.

Emma hummed. “They closed Arcadia and Immaculata, I think.”

“Aren’t we closer to the warehouse?” The warehouse she’d burned down, the warehouse full of what had been an estimated hundreds of thousands of dollars of weapons and ammunition. Taylor bit down on the guilt, pushing it down. There was nothing she could do about it now, no take-backs, and she wasn’t even really sure she would if she was given the chance. Burning that place down had diminished the Empire, taken _so_ much from them, taken weapons that would’ve been used to kill others.

Shrugging, Emma glanced back down at her own work, pausing for a few moments before quietly pulling her phone out. She clearly wasn’t in any headspace to do work either. “I don’t think it matters, Arcadia has the Wards, Immaculata is private; they prioritized safety.”

A lot of people had. The school was paradoxically empty and full, a lot of students had just skipped, whether by a command from their parents or simply because they didn’t want to risk it. Sure, it wasn’t a warzone or anything out there - _yet_ \- but it was getting worse with every hour, with every new attempt at a demonstration, with every new cape fight. Teachers were absent too, not just Mr. Gladly, her Math teacher for the first period hadn’t come in to work, they were apparently sick, but Taylor doubted it, and substitutes were unwilling to come to school, so that had been a study hall as well.

It left gaps in the school, crowds of students diminished, pockmarked, with absentee teachers and a generally strained atmosphere. It felt like a primed explosive, a gas-soaked rag, all waiting for that spark to rip itself apart.

“Sophia’s absent too,” Taylor muttered, not finding it in herself to disguise the disappointment behind that. Emma shot her a wry look, which she returned with a proffered middle finger. Cheeky bitch.

Emma just laughed, all soft and whispery. She couldn’t laugh too loud, nobody wanted to spook someone else and start something. “Missing your girlfriend, huh?”

She wasn’t so unaware to say that she didn’t. Sophia’s presence was nice, weighted, a way to distract herself, and her absence was felt, pronounced. “Did her mom just refuse to let her go?” Taylor asked, after a moment.

Emma nodded. “Seemed that way. Which, speaking of, why isn’t Uncle Danny wrapping you in eight layers of bubble wrap and locking you in your room?”

“Because you said you were going,” Taylor answered honestly. The good morning text accompanied by complaints about still having to go even when the entire city seemed like it was going to shit had been what really pushed her to do it. “They said I could stay home, but I pushed the issue. Said you were going, and I didn’t want to risk leaving you alone, they understood.”

Hell, not even Madison - not that she could probably do anything about it if someone started something - was here. Emma would’ve been alone for all but the handful of her hangers-on, and that wasn’t really a safe environment, not now. People were looking for a reason to fight, to lash out, and targeting a crowd of girls who were ‘too loud’ or who rejected them was just the sort of thing someone would do.

Emma flushed prettily, glanced away for a few moments. “Thank you,” she said, quietly.

“I wouldn’t leave you behind, Ems,” Taylor said simply, which got another rise of red to Emma’s face, one that crawled over her ears, soaked into her skin. “It’s not like we’ve done much, anyway, it’s not much of a school if nobody is here to teach, huh?”

That got another quiet laugh out of Emma, the red receding from her skin. “I’m pretty sure whoever provides substitute teachers told Winslow to go away,” she whispered, sounding almost conspiratorial.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” she agreed, thinking back to the size of some of the rallies on Sunday. “They’re considering calling in the National Guard.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Emma pointed out, which, fair. The National Guard and Brockton had a unique relationship, in that they’d been in the city more than a few times to prevent riots and revolts, with aid from the local PRT and Protectorate departments. One of the major ones she had any lingering memory of was watching the post-Marquis riots take place on a boxy television, being held strangle-tight by her mother at the sight of it. She’d done research later - the memory had stuck with her - and it hadn’t been pretty, the huge power vacuum left over from his arrest had resulted in one of the largest gang wars in known history for the east coast, on par with the Boston Games.

It was only a faint, distant hope that something like that wouldn’t happen here. It wasn’t likely, Marquis had run his gang from a uniquely top-down position, more so than anyone else. Even if someone did manage to arrest and put Kaiser in the Birdcage, he’d just be replaced by Hookwolf or Purity, though the latter was up for debate. Apparently she was trying her hand at being a hero, which was funny, considering the death rate of encounters with her hadn’t changed, neither had her targeting minorities.

Taylor personally thought the entire thing was a farce. If she really wanted to turn the other cheek, she’d turn herself in, or just fucking _leave_ and go to ground and live out her life as a civilian instead of lighting up the sky every couple of days to brutalize minority groups, gang members or not. Her posturing, her claims, they fell flat, tasted more like she wanted the praise of being a hero, the glorification, without having to change herself.

For all that she was fucking reviled and hated for her behaviour, at least she never pretended to be anything other than what she was: Shrike.

The tip of Emma’s middle finger skipped across the tip of her nose, jolting her out of her thoughts. Looking at Emma, she opened her mouth, closed it.

“Sorry,” Emma said, completely unapologetic. “You looked really upset, I just wanted to get you back in the moment.”

Shutting her eyes, Taylor leaned back into the creaky plastic of her chair, opening her eyes a crack once she’d finally managed to ground herself. “Thanks,” she said, voice uncomfortably rough, bristly. She cleared her throat as softly as she could, swallowing a few times. “Bad thoughts.”

Emma’s features softened, a gentle expression on her face. “It’s okay, Taylor. You have every right to be upset about this sort of thing.”

She did, huh?

She wasn’t sure about that. No, she was pretty sure she didn’t. She had been vulnerable, a target, sure, picked out by Brent, sure, and he had done that to her, she hadn’t done it to herself, but... it had been _her_ weakness, her inability to fight her way out, to be stronger. It hadn’t only been his strength that had kept her cowed, miserable, terrified and twisted, it had been her _weakness_.

No. No, she really didn’t have any _right_ to that feeling. Not anymore, not ever. To have any right to it would make her a victim, and she wasn’t. Couldn’t be. She breathed in, not sharply, but enough that Emma noticed, that Emma looked, that her face scrunched into concern. Reaching out, gentle touches and costless softness, Emma laced their fingers together, tightened down, pressed their palm-against-palm, her grip strong enough to ground her, to drag her a little back down to earth, away from her thoughts.

She had to be strong. There was no other option. She had so much to lose.

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Settling down into her seat, Missy slumped down in the seat to her right and Chris in the seat to her left. The other Wards took up their chosen places, Dennis next to Carlos, who was next to Chris, and Dean next to Dennis. She noticed the others, a large crowd of PRT officers a few rows down, New Wave picking a spot between them and the few members of the Brockton Protectorate who weren’t up on stage, ready for the presentation. The independents - seeing as there weren’t really any corporate teams in Brockton, not anymore - took seats in clusters, little pockets of two or three capes, staggered out among the rows, but far enough apart that intercape politics was clearly still in play.

What a headache.

Glancing up at the stage, Sophia tried to look suitably attentive as Armsmaster prowled across the stage floor, Miss Militia following just behind him. Coming to a halt next to the mic, Armsmaster scanned the crowd, before finally folding his hands behind him.

“If you have been invited to this meeting, you are either affiliated with the Protectorate or PRT, are an unaffiliated hero with less than two strikes on record, a member of a team which is partnered with the Protectorate, or a vigilante with none and at least two months of active service.” He began, his voice carrying through the mic, to the various speakers that had been set up around the area.

Motioning behind him, the wall lit up like a screen. It was blank, showing only featureless white, but she was pretty sure that was about to change. “Roughly three days ago, at around 21:00, a yet-unknown parahuman in conflict with members of the Empire Eighty-Eight escalated and set fire to a cache of weaponry and ammunition, resulting in a series of explosions and the destruction of, as far as investigators can be sure, more than two-hundred and thirty thousand US dollars worth of smuggled weaponry.”

The back wall changed, the sight of the charred-out husk of a warehouse visible, the surrounding area scorched, littered with cooled slag.

“Two members of the gang were wounded, one more severely than the other.” Armsmaster continued, his voice forever level, a constant, almost monotonous calm. The picture didn’t change, but Sophia had seen photos of them before they’d extracted those knives. One of them had most of the top row of his teeth kicked in, accompanied by a pretty nasty concussion.

“The other major gangs in the area—the Merchants and the Azn Bad Boys—took advantage of that weakness and set off a series of skirmishes which resulted in six deaths over the last twenty-four hours, and an unknown but estimated ninety-three injured. The Empire retaliated by mass mobilizing and attempting to riot in several regions, which were dispersed by the local police force with help from several PRT squads in the event of cape intervention.” The screen changed, videos - muted - playing out, candid angles showing large crowds of protestors and rabble-rousers being forced back by riot shields and tear gas canisters. “This was mostly successful, with only a number injured, but did not actually prevent any new mobilization of Empire gang members or those sympathetic to their cause. Riots have continued to appear, escalating in violence and intensity. As of last night, though this is unreported, a total of two non-white families were targeted and brutalized in their own homes, with a total of four deaths and two heavily wounded.”

There was a staggered noise of surprise and horror among just about everyone. Sophia kept quiet, but it was a relatively close thing.

“The National Guard is currently on its way to provide reinforcements. We have additionally been loaned two capes from Boston, who have already arrived, and three more capes, particularly from New York, are ready to be deployed and transported immediately to Brockton if the situation worsens in any quantifiable way. We also have up to ten other capes willing to be deployed from various PRT branches across the country if this escalates into a worst-case scenario. Information on these capes is available in the booklets that you’ve all been provided with, please take some time to read them over and become familiar with your possible reinforcements.” Armsmaster continued, once everyone had finally settled down.

Sophia glanced at the bundle of papers in her hand, listened to the sound of shifting pages. She thumbed it open, flicking through the basic read-out of the situation, finally coming across the two Boston capes. Fax and Shockplug, the former could create fragile - albeit tangible - flaming humanoid figures out of nearby fire sources which scaled up to the size of said source of fire, the latter was an electrokinetic who could charge held anything they touched with electricity proportional to the conductivity of said thing, ranging from ‘taser’ to ‘extremely lethal’ depending on the tool. It wasn’t a lot, but... Fax seemed to have some potential, at the very least.

“Currently, Thinkers believe things will continue to escalate,” Armsmaster interrupted, drawing Sophia’s attention away from her search for the possible New York reinforcements and back to him. “It’s also generally assumed that they will continue to target families. We are currently facing a crisis, one that has the chance to snowball rapidly out of control, and it is in everyone’s best interest to work from the assumption that things will get significantly worse before they get better. We have started setting up blockades and begun outreach to minority communities in regions the Empire generally contests, with some limited successes.”

The silence was heavy this time as the screen changed to a map, showing off the rough estimate of gang territory, bright gold lines marking out the communities of minorities. Most weren’t in the Empire’s territory, she noticed, but there was enough overlap to make her stomach twist, and there were enough communities within a short distance that them branching out in their attacks would be likely. Her only saving grace was that her house was far, far away, but... shit, Taylor lived near some of that, didn’t she?

“We are going to be declaring a state of emergency within the hours of 17:00 and 21:00, and even if we do not, schools will be required to shut down until the situation can be handled and it becomes safe to congregate again. While we won’t be restricting foot traffic or placing a curfew, it is heavily recommended that you tell others to remain inside or find safe shelters until this situation is handled.” Armsmaster shifted, glancing over everyone in the crowd, a long, lingering look. “We request that you all provide us with aid during these times, and take part in joint patrols and operations intended to curtail further influence. It will be decided based on team, but some of these will be sensitive operations, others will not. It would be best if you could continue your normal patrols, but remain aware of your surroundings, things have been extreme, yes, but only in specific circumstances. There is no clear indication when or if things will become more immediately chaotic and risky to engage with.”

Taking in a Breath, Armsmaster stared back down at them. “This is a confluence of factors, and what is a ‘perfect storm’ of a worst-case. We are currently not in a state of emergency, nor are people rioting in the streets. We have only experienced skirmishes and some protests and unlawful gatherings. This is also our public line, what we will be telling the press, with the intent to keep people at home and safe.”

The muttering, however low, petered off at that. People seemed to relax a bit, even Missy. Maybe it was because of how Brockton was, but people came into things with the innate assumption that the worst case _was_ the current situation, that things had gone from zero to exceptionally awful.

Miss Militia stepped forward, Armsmaster ceding the microphone to her. “What we’ve described are possible projections, potential futures if we let things continue as they are, but that’s not what we’re going to do. We may be facing a possible gang war, a massive shift in power, and we cannot let that continue. Our intended plans, therefore, is to prevent this from escalating any further, to keep things calm, and to break apart riots and arrest who we can.”

The screen changed, Sophia tensing as Shrike and about a handful of others she hadn’t already seen in the crowd appeared across the screen. “These are among the capes that are likely to respond to this situation poorly or attempt to take advantage of the situation to further their own goals. Our main focus will be on the gangs, yes, but secondary goals are to prevent these people from worsening the situation. Most of these are independent heroes and vigilantes, with only a few villains, as you can see.”

When nobody said anything, Miss Militia continued. “Our first and major concern is one of the main suspects for the warehouse fire: Shrike. Shrike is a Tinker, likely you’ve heard of her, we have her currently classified as a Tinker-slash-Blaster four, pending an increase to six, alongside a Thinker rating of three due to her inhuman accuracy without any sign of technology which would grant her that ability.”

More silence.

“Shrike is our main concern among those on the screen. She is extremely violent, prone to mutilating Empire members, and some early Thinker reviews have pushed the idea that she likely has deep-seated grief with the Empire that would be enough to self-justify killing members in cold blood, though she has yet to go that far. Them rallying like this will be too much for her, and she will likely go out with the intent to hurt others. If she did, in fact, set fire to the warehouse, she has possibly escalated further again, and may even kill someone.”

Sophia clenched her fists, tried to breathe. Dean was shooting her sympathetic looks, probably took her anxiety - _fuck_ she hated how she could admit that - and anger to be related to white nationalists, not to Shrike. He could be a bit dense like that, and she’d probably been labelled a lesbian in his head anyway. She was basically the amalgam of shit the Empire hated: non-white and not straight, and there was every reason for her to be upset, to be worried that she could be targeted.

“If you see Shrike, you are recommended to attempt to talk her down, and if that doesn’t work, you have the ability to issue an arrest. We may contest that arrest if you attacked her without warning, Shrike has not yet reached her third strike, and she is still to be cooperated with at all possible, but it is in everyone’s best interest to ensure she doesn’t escalate things further or act as a rallying point for Empire members. She already has a reputation among them, and her presence could very easily cause things to spiral out of control.”

She had a ‘date’ with Taylor tomorrow. A stay-in one, on paper, anyway, but a date. A date she was using to cover her going out, a date that Taylor would use as an excuse to go out and hunt people down. She stifled the guilt before it could flare up, unwilling to let Dean see it if she could manage. She... she had to think, had to decide, what she was going to do about that, if she was going to do something about that. If she even _could_.

“Now that we have Shrike covered, we’ll move on to the other capes you should be on the lookout for, before segueing into more concrete plans of action we’ll be undertaking for the next twenty-four hours. Before that, however, does anyone have any questions?”


	10. A-TRACK 1.6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor does nothing to help the situation, Sophia is honest about her feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: injuries, mentions of exploiting a sex worker
> 
> song credit: remember - on your memories - (reprises version, armored core ost)

Dropping her overnight bag at the foot of the couch, Taylor glanced around the increasingly familiar sight of Sophia’s basement. It was a pretty nice place, if barren, with really only the couches, chairs, table, the television, that mini-fridge and the hallway that led to Sophia’s room and the other guest bedrooms, one of which would be hers for the night, when she got back.

She could even still hear her mother upstairs, probably trying to alleviate her nerves. This night of all nights was, to be fair, not the greatest to have a date. The only reason she had been allowed over was probably that the Hess household was a fair distance away from the chaos - whereas her actual home was uncomfortably close to some of the recent skirmishes - and the date itself had become more of a sleepover when it became clear a few hours ago that driving around past six or seven o’clock was just not in the books unless they wanted to risk getting caught in the middle of a fight.

The television was on the news, not muted, but low enough that she could only pick up a few words out the lot. The image on it was a scene from a few hours ago, a clip of the National Guard standing in a line, shields bared, as people in black and red brandished weapons - guns, bats, anything they could get their hands on - and chucked debris at the windows of an apartment. Behind the line of shields, armoured PRT officers aimed wide-barreled weapons over the line, fired, canisters twirling through the air and hitting the ground with an explosion of foam and churning grey smoke, driving the crowd of people further back.

Turning her focus away from it, Taylor met Sophia’s eyes. There was something complicated in the back of them, tense, but it didn’t linger on her face long enough to put a word to it. It would make sense if she was upset, white nationalists were literally rioting in the streets at this point and for all that they were safe they could very quickly _not_ be, if things got out of hand.

Walking around the arm of the couch, Taylor dropped herself down into the plush fabric. At the other end, Gumbo gave her a lidded, lazy look, snuffling once before burying his snout back between his paws, eyes shutting.

“It’s really gone to shit out there, huh,” Taylor said, eyes flicking back to the screen as it transitioned to the image of a pretty blonde newscaster.

Sophia made a noise, low and tired. “It has,” she said, finally, turning her attention away from Taylor and to the television as well. She plucked the remote from the side table to her right, maneuvering herself so that she was almost cradled in the arms of the chair, legs thrown over one arm while her back pressed against the other. She turned the volume up, the woman’s voice rising into coherency.

“— _we are at the end of a long day of conflict, Cathy. While Joseph will be on in just a moment to give us a closer look at the street level, we are to remind people to stay indoors, and that there has been a state of emergency called. If you believe you are at risk for targeted gang violence, the phone number on the screen will get you help suited to your situation as soon as possible. Please be safe. Now, onto you Joseph.”_

At least they were trying. That was more than could be said for a lot of things, lately.

The screen changed again to a street-level shot. It was darker out, street lights on, and in the far distance the dull embers of something burning were just barely visible over the police barricade that had been put up. A white man in his mid-forties with a head full of curly black hair smiled politely at the camera, though it looked a little wan. “ _Thank you, Lauren. As you can see behind me, I am at the intersection between Clifford Street and Oxton Road in Pleasant Acre. Not too far behind me, violent conflicts between two of the largest gangs in our city are taking place: the Empire Eighty-Eight, and The Archer Bridge Merchants. Currently, while there has been no report of gunfire, there have been reports of arson and some physical altercations._ ”

“Isn’t it a bit stupid to have him so close?” Sophia asked, Taylor’s eyes tracking to her, watching as she tilted her head, almost like a dog, a cute scrunch to her nose.

Taylor found herself shrugging, some of the tension she hadn’t known was there bleeding out of her. “I think it says something more that we’re so desensitized to violence that he’s over there telling us the details about how the gangs are beating each other to death with metal objects and he’s not looking really bothered by it.”

Sophia grunted. “That’s true,” she admitted.

Closing her eyes, Taylor blocked out the sound of the television for a moment, listening. She could just barely hear the rumble of her mother’s car, a dull chortle of noise as wheels pulled against concrete, growing distant. Something unpleasant in her heart clenched, a certain energy, tension, writhing away in her chest. She opened her eyes, met Sophia’s, who was looking at her with that expression again.

“I need to,” Taylor said without thinking, rising slowly to her feet. Gumbo wuffled, a curious noise, rising up from his bundle of furs and pudge and padding oh-so-gently along the distance of the couch, his head bumping into her hip. She paused for a moment, and with little prompting the labrador did it again, a gentle push. Reaching down with fingers far too tense, Taylor brushed them through his fur, scritched gently, the dog responding with continued pressure against her hip, not enough to shove or push, just enough to let her know he was there.

“He was trained for that, you know?” Sophia said, her voice so much closer. Taylor glanced around maybe a little too sharply, a little too quick, giving away her nervousness, the tension. She was standing now, maybe a few steps away from her, one leg of her baggy sweatpants rucked up near her knee. “I got him when I was younger, he’s a...” Sophia hesitated, paused, before swallowing and locking her shoulders. “A—a service dog, for PTSD.”

Oh. _Oh_.

Taylor kept running her fingers through Gumbo’s fur, felt the soft texture, the gentle heat that radiated out from him. He was soft, anchoring, knew how to bring people down from ledges, but then she hadn’t ever really been on that ledge, had she? Not since that last night; she’d long since stepped off of it. She was falling now, just slow enough that people hadn’t quite noticed yet.

It was too late for her. But this helped, this trust, it did something for her, warmed her chest. She wanted to sink her fingers into Sophia’s hair, press herself into her body, soak in her presence, her safety, that trust. A trust that was conditional, that was even a bit toxic, Sophia was keeping a secret that weighed more than knowing she suffered from trauma, a secret that could get her in trouble, making her a target if it got out. It wasn’t balanced, it was even _unfair_.

“I’m sorry,” Taylor said, for lack of anything better.

Sophia just looked at her, eyes sad.

Releasing Gumbo, she stepped away, not quite able to look at the dog, the temptation to just soak in his presence. She had to go out, every inch of her skin _itched_ with the need, her bones screamed in fleshy prisons to creak and ache, her mind conjured endless images of violence, of conflict. She couldn’t stay, this was what she had to do, she had brought her costume, her weapons, all packed away in that duffle bag. The urge was too big, she was too far gone.

Shaking herself free, Taylor walked back around the couch, leaning down to grab hold of her duffel bag. She tried not to think about how white her knuckles were, how every action she made was cramped, tight, a desperate clench.

Fingers tangled into the back of her sweater, pulled.

“Don’t go,” Sophia pleaded, and though she couldn’t see her, the worry in her voice shone so clear, so harsh. Complete and total emotional honesty, the first time she’d ever heard it in Sophia’s voice outside of a few moments of anger and the words she told Emma when she found out about their ‘relationship’. “Please.”

Taylor swallowed. There was something achingly familiar about this, about someone trying to keep her in one place, to stop her from doing what she needed to do, but it was a hollow comparison. Just like how Sophia could be aggressive but not like Brent, this was similarly different. Sophia was worried for her, for her health and her safety and the number of other things, she was not trying to _possess_ her or cage her or keep her down.

Sophia and her warmth, and her worry, and her little secrets, gifted out in pieces, each one relished. Sophia and the smell of oils, worn leather, the way she radiated heat on her touches, how every little sign of affection or care was something you didn’t have to necessarily work for but were only given in small parts. Nothing about her was easy, or gentle, or particularly soft, she could be mean, she could be violent, but she was Sophia.

And Taylor liked her.

 _Ah._ Shit. She did, didn’t she? That was... bad. Liked her more than she should, liked her in a way she didn’t _want_ to like people anymore, in that way that made her face crawl with heat and her chest clench like a stranglehold. She liked her, associated things with her, liked her warmth and her trust and the shared secrets, liked her in a way that made her want to bury her nose in the crook of her neck, get lost in her presence, anchor herself on her.

Taylor flinched away like she was burned, the fingers pulled free from her sweater. She stumbled a few steps, bag dragged with her, the heat on her face bright, harsh, crawling from cheek to ear to neck and down her collarbone, to her chest. She breathed in, shut her eyes, pushed it down harshly, kicked and batted at the sensation until she was certain that she was centred, that none of it showed, that none of that inner turmoil - _fear fear fear_ \- was visible on her face.

She turned, met Sophia’s eyes, saw Gumbo looking between the two of them, almost like he was worried.

“I’m sorry,” she said, again. She was, too. She was sorry that she was who she was, that she formed attachments so easy, ones so ready to hurt her, that she was unreasonably violent, that she did what she did.

But being sorry still didn’t stop her from leaving.

* * *

[6 of 7]  
[_Now Playing..._](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPYgd0pd9ik)

* * *

The streets were a mess, pockets of conflict meeting other pockets. She could just distantly hear gunfire off in the distance, a dull rat-a-tat that cracked, bounced between buildings. Streetlights illuminated what they could, pockets of vision along stretches of darkness between cramped buildings, and where they failed fire took their place. Some buildings burned, others had burning trash cans, and even a few were abandoned torches, left on the street side.

It was chaos, it was bordering on anarchy.

It made hunting a target far, far easier.

There was something in her this time, a fit of anger, a predatory rage. Each step was calculated, each movement guarded, she already had a spear in hand as she jumped between the short gaps in buildings, not caring if the people below heard her. Stealth was useful when it was but when the world burned to be subtle only meant so much. Capes were out, she could see the distant flicker of laser fire some distance away, cracking into the sky, a mix of reds, purples and blues, but they were distant, the heroes in general were. She preferred it that way.

Below her, on the street, four little men who thought themselves bigger than anyone who didn’t share their skin colour _laughed_. It was a booming thing, giddy and unrepentant, chortles as they shared their conquests, their jokes, their _superiority_. None of them looked important, but then they didn’t have to be; tonight was when the whistles went away, when things became _real_ , when the masks came off and they said what they _meant_ to say instead of just implying it.

She perched on the edge of the roof, stared down at them like a gargoyle, like a monster. To them, she probably was; she was _the_ Shrike, the reason why any of this was happening. Sure, they were taking advantage of the chaos to really let out their own inner monsters, but did that really matter? Monsters would be monsters, regardless of how they dressed themselves up for it.

Taylor knew that best of all.

“So the dumb bitch, right, she’s like, ‘shut up you pig’,” the blonde of the group said, his voice a lurid, smarmy thing. “So I cop a feel, just to double-check what Nicholas over there”—he motioned at the bald one, his head adorned with a chain that linked together a series of celtic crosses—“said about her ass, and she _squeals_.”

There was a bout of laughter.

“Like a piggy,” Nicholas reaffirmed, voice smug. “A piglet who I pay for sex, sure, but a pig.”

Her javelin extended out to its full length, her fingers tense and white-knuckle. Her vision narrowed down to Nicholas, his leg angled just right, the javelin just long enough—

“She got all uppity about it, you know?” Blondie complained, huffing like a toddler.

She tensed her arm, felt the servos hiss, adjusting, enhancing her strength.

Nicholas shrugged. “I paid her for one person, not _three_.”

She threw, the javelin exploding on the ass end, an eruption of noise and flame, a smear of black metal that left her fingers and tore through Nicholas’ calf in a blink, then into the concrete, sending him toppling back, sheathing itself deep into the earth. Taylor reached behind her as she pushed forward, slipping one knife into her hand as she dropped the distance from the roof, the servos around her legs locking, readying, before she hit the blonde right on his back, the servos screaming as they redistributed the force that would’ve gone to her right into him. Something in the blonde’s hips shattered, a scream escaping his lips as he was forced to the ground, one thigh popped unpleasantly out of place.

She whipped one arm out, knife leaving her fingers and slamming into the foot of a brown-haired, freckled guy in his early twenties, locking him in place.

“Shrike!” The last of the four - black-hair, green eyes, vaguely familiar - screamed, loud and terrified, scrambling backwards, trying to run. Her fingers found her other knife, and she jumped from the broken, misaligned hips of the blonde - to the sound of his relishing _screams_ \- and threw it at an angle, getting him right through the back of his ankle, his foot, and into the concrete, jerking him to a stop, a painful wail leaping from his lips.

Standing up at her full height, Taylor didn’t even bother to survey her work. He had been too loud, if someone had heard her cape name, well, she was about to be swarmed, and even she knew better than to do that. The alley between the building she had dropped off and the one next to it was cramped, dark, filthy and slick, but it also had one of those metal staircases built into the brownstone of the building, not that it looked all that safe or maintained.

Turning towards it, hot burning pain exploded across her left side, the press of something metal and cold contrasting the ache of pain and _it hurt hurt hurt_. She jerked away, out from the gloom of the alley a man with a knife, looking bewildering between it and her, stood. There had been five, why hadn’t she noticed the fifth, _he had been right there_ —

“I hurt the Shrike,” the guy murmured, brown hair and black eyes staring at the knife. He glanced back up at her, something like _pride_ and _eagerness_ blooming across his face. He flicked the knife around, lunged at her, knife brandished in a reverse hold. Taylor scrambled back, terror in her throat, a scream on her lips as she pulled at the first thing she could get her hands around in her belt, adrenaline howling in her ears as she threw whatever it was in a sloppy arc, the dart slamming home into his stomach and then hissing with an electric pulse before the man spasmed wildly, dropping the knife and crumpling to his knees, clutching at the dart.

Rage filled the gaps where terror had been, the pain arcing, spasming, not familiar - knife wounds burned, they felt raised, irritated, and the blood was soaking into the fabric of her suit - but the situation itself was. She lunged, slamming her fist into his face, once, twice, grabbing a fistful of his hair and hauling his head to the side, cracking it against the surface of the brownstone, again and again, and _again_ until she had to drop him to clutch at the pulsing pain in her side, the man groaning and rolling over now that she wasn’t grappling with him.

She breathed in harshly, the rattle in her chest weak and fluttering. Her heart pounded in her ears, in the weeping wound. She could feel where the flesh parted with her fingers, the part of her body where it pulled away, the blood that drooled down her side, matted her fingers. She wobbled, toppling, grasping at the wall, her bloodied hand coming up to yank the scarf free from her face, the cold biting against her lips, her chin, now that they weren’t covered. Shakily, she wrapped it around her midsection, tying it off once tight enough to make the ache of the wound escalate into a burning agony. Her legs threatened to give out on her, it _hurt_ , she hated hurting, it brought her back, that weakness, that _pain_. She couldn’t, she couldn’t, not again, no, _no no no no_.

“Over here!”

Voices, loud. She had to run, she scrambled forward, ignoring the pain, rushing as fast as she could through the delirium of the wound, the adrenaline in her skull. Nobody could see her, she needed to hide, she needed to get away. Where? Where? Home was too far, too risky, still in the radius where she could be found, where conflict was. Who? Sophia, right, she was supposed to be there, sleeping over. _Don’t_ _go_ , she shouldn’t’ve.

She knew the way, and it got clearer as the haze of pain and panic pulled from her eyes. She kept running, ignoring the pain in her side, in her lungs, and slipped back into the maze of streets and alleyways.

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Sophia unlocked the basement door, pushed it open carefully. She had a bat just beside the door, just in case that text wasn’t from Taylor, she was back too early, something had either gone wrong or she had been caught and someone had gotten into her phone. Peeking through the crack, she breathed a heady sigh of relief when she saw Taylor, scarf around her midsection, looking... was that blood?

Sophia pushed the door open - stupid stupid stupid there could be more people using her as a _hostage_ \- fully, rushing out into the chill, finding nobody else. Taylor toppled to the side, and Sophia had to reach out to catch her, her hand pressing against the wet, copper-soaked makeshift bandage. The blood was sticky, gummy, almost cold. At a closer look, Taylor was no better, too pale to be anything good.

“In.” Sophia barked out, and wordlessly Taylor followed, stumbling up the few steps and into the basement door, which Sophia shut and locked behind them. Dragging her wordlessly, Sophia made for the hallway, stopping only to grab the first aid kit off of the wall near the television - PRT-issued, meant for exceptional emergencies, given to every hero, Ward or Protectorate - before dragging her towards her room, shoving the door open without a care.

“Sit on the bed, tell me what happened,” Sophia commanded, rushing to the other end, pulling at one of her dresser drawers, pushing aside shitty underwear to get at the hidden manuals beneath them. She had to be in work mode right now, if she let the panic or worry pull her under Taylor would bleed the _fuck_ out in her house and she had to be sure that didn’t happen.

“Slashed,” Taylor slurred, sounding barely there. “St’pid ‘stake.”

Shit, shit. How much blood had she lost? Sophia turned back to her, thumbing to the page about cut wounds, how to stitch them, shit like that. She walked over, dropped the kit beside Taylor, and reached over to tear the hole where the wound had been larger, Taylor making a wordless noise of complaint but not stopping her. Withholding a hiss, she looked over the wound, it wasn’t horrible, but... it was wide enough that it’d need stitches. Shit.

Popping the kit open, Sophia pulled out one of the plastic-sealed needles and the length of medical stitching. She flipped to the appropriate page, scanning it, how to stitch a wound together was basic first aid but her memories needed to be jogged, panic was doing her focus no favours and Taylor bleeding into her bedspread was no better. She’d have to claim her period came early or something, bullshit that she synced up or something, whatever. It didn’t matter, not right now, she just had to do this, had to fix this.

Loosening the cap on the disinfectant, Sophia looked up at Taylor, who looked back at her but didn’t really seem to be focusing. “Sor’y,” the other girl slurred thoughtlessly, head bobbing back.

“Bite on your glove, Taylor,” Sophia said as firmly as she could. Taylor, hazy-eyed and barely focusing, did as she asked. Sophia dabbed some of the bottle onto the accompanying pad of cloth it came with, readying herself to flinch away from a retaliatory swing. She didn’t look coherent enough to realize what was happening.

She pretended not to hear the warbling, pained noise Taylor made as she began to apply the hydrogen peroxide.

* * *

Taylor’s head shifted a little in her lap, hair pooling around her thighs. She had gotten her out of her costume - black bodysuit, black jacket with white fur, black leather gloves with white-painted metal servos, white domino mask that nearly covered the tip of her nose, and a black scarf - and into some of the clothing that was left in the overnight bag that she’d left near the door when she left. Her projectiles were packed away as well, hidden beneath the clothes she’d worn on the way over, looking perfectly inconspicuous. Everything was safe, hidden.

Sophia stared at her hands, flexed her fingers. They were perfectly clear, no sign of blood, yet she could still feel it, still feel the gummy wetness between the fingers, sticky and metal. She brought her fingers together, apart, felt surprised when there was no resistance, when there was no wetness, no clotting. She swallowed, throat dry, panic in her chest, the adrenaline gone, replaced with a deep-rooted sense of unease.

She still felt what it was like to push the needle through, the soft, bleary noises of pain that had escaped Taylor’s lips, the shaky, bloodstained fingerprints she’d left on her manual. She might have to burn it.

Taylor murmured in her sleep, face pressing in further against her thigh. Sophia watched her for a moment, watched her breathe, watched as she twitched and shifted and nestled ever-closer into her, one arm wrapped around her midsection. She looked relaxed, soft, when asleep, so different from that wan, worn-out thing that had stumbled into the house, bleeding from her side, looking like the world had been torn out from her, almost feral.

Would she go back out after this? It wasn’t a close call, the cut hadn’t been shallow but it also hadn’t been lethal and Taylor had likely walked quite the distance with it. Would she wake up tomorrow to find her gone?

Why did it matter that the thought of that made her terrified? Made panic swirl in her chest?

Choking back a noise, Sophia stared up at her ceiling, reached down to gently run her fingers through Taylor’s sweat-damp hair. She got a low noise in response, a gentle contented hum.

She cared about Taylor enough to be worried, to be fearful that she’d go off and die, go off and bleed out in some corner. What if she hadn’t found out about her? Would she be consoling Emma tomorrow about her dead best friend? Would she hear about how Shrike bled out somewhere? What did she change, by inserting herself like this, by making herself _vulnerable_?

Sophia wasn’t sure, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know what the alternative could’ve been.


	11. A-TRACK 1.7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor hunts her white whale, Sophia wakes up alone.
> 
> (music: flood of life (extended live mix))

Weakness was caustic. It soaked into a person, and if you let it, it would hollow you out; gnaw away at what made you _unique_ and reduce you down to little else but a broken, pathetic creature, jumping at shadows and unable to support your own burdens.

Taylor knew this well, knew it personally.

Disentangling herself from Sophia was a test by perseverance. Going by the color of the sky, it was likely pre-dawn, if not that far from morning, and Sophia’s presence, her warmth, conditional by only insofar, was tempting to sink back down into, to lace her legs into, to tuck herself back into her chest and leech from that warmth. There were so many temptations, so much pushing her to just... let herself be weak, to let someone else hold her up, take care of her, that it was almost a motivator, almost a reminder about what happened last time she let herself get too complacent, too _reliant_.

Her side burned as she stood, toes wiggling in the carpet, sucking in breaths and letting them out quietly through her teeth. It hurt, it hurt like something nasty, though to its own credit it didn’t look infected, just pained. Stitching ran the length of the wound, stapled her flesh back together where there had once been a gap large enough to dip the tip of her finger into. It was the pain, mostly, that was keeping her awake, the bone-deep fatigue hadn’t gone away, even with the amount of time she’d slept, and the mental fatigue that came along with it, the sort of aching weariness that comes after an emotional outburst, wasn’t helping anything.

She was so tired, so _weak_. The bed was warm, comforting, with gentle arms and safe scents and someone she _liked_ , but it was as much a coffin as it was a haven. Not that her getting out of one coffin didn’t mean she wasn’t about to climb into another, of course.

Gumbo glanced at her as she walked the length of the bed, his spot at the foot of Sophia’s blanket. He whined, low and quiet, and Taylor froze, hearing as the whine grew louder, promising a bark. She stumbled towards him, smooshed her hand against his maw, and he quieted instantly, the bark swallowed. He nosed wetly at her fingers, lapped once, twice, gentle comforts that she didn’t particularly deserve.

A whispered laugh, more hysterical than not, burbled out of her lips. She leaned down, pressed her face into the dog’s fur just like she wanted, took in his scent, his warmth, the softness of his body and the way he imperceptibly relaxed at the gesture, like he’d expected it, like he was trained to accommodate it. His snout pushed forward, nosing sleepily at her leg, and he almost seemed like he was listening, like he was there for her. She swallowed dryly and wondered if speaking would actually help anything.

“I enjoy it, you know?” She whispered into his fur. “Pinning them to the ground, watching them squirm like bugs about to have their legs plucked.”

Gumbo did and said nothing, simply breathed in, out, slow whuffling breaths that she could feel on the skin of her hand.

She sucked the air in between her teeth, pushed back on the burn in her eyes, burying herself deeper. Sophia’s heavy breathing was just audible, deep, just like her sleep. Gumbo made a little noise when she did nothing, curious, worried, she was humanizing an animal that likely had been trained to respond that way, to imitate the functions of empathy, but she pushed those intrusive thoughts aside. That was reductive, self-hating, intentionally depriving herself of comfort.

“I knew he would kill me eventually,” she admitted tiredly, flexing her fingers against his fur to quiet him. “Looked at myself in the mirror one day when I got home, saw something broken, twisted, ready to die, and wondered where the strength my mother had taught me had gone.” She could still feel his fingers around her neck, around her arm, the crack of his palm against her cheek, knuckles against her brow.

“I hate myself so _so_ much,” she croaked, feeling the first drip of tears, hot and burning. “It burns, it burns and it takes—it’s like acid, I hate it—hate myself.”

More silence, heavy breathing and soft doggy noises.

“I wish I was okay,” she said to nobody, not even to Gumbo.

The dog relaxed more, drooped. He was tired, it was early, he was _old_. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t keep her here, couldn’t remain awake long enough to stop her from what she was going to do, where she was going to go, how she was going to try to reclaim that balance, that strength.

“I wish I was okay,” she whispered again, fingers creasing one silky ear. She hiccuped weakly into his fur, stifling a quiet sob with a sort of grotesque ease, practiced. Gumbo was limp, now, dozing or asleep or somewhere inbetween; it didn’t matter, he wouldn’t be able to stop her.

Pulling away, Taylor waited until she was sure Gumbo wasn’t about to whine or bark. Turning back towards her things - bag abandoned at the side - she walked, ignored the flare of white-hot pain as she leaned down to wrap her fingers around the strap, pulling it up and hanging it over her good side’s shoulder. She glanced back at Sophia, content, asleep, having grabbed hold of a pillow with her absence, face smushed into the fabric. She was pretty, so pretty, without the tension she carried when awake, looking almost innocent, trying her best to be comfortable without a care for how she existed in the space around her.

She would have to leave a note, just so that they thought she went home early, was unable to sleep from the worry. It wasn’t entirely untrue, worked as a lie, and she was pretty sure the chaos outside would’ve died down by now, if not for the fact that it was possible it got around that she was wounded, then because the riots themselves had to disperse eventually, people had to sleep.

Reaching for the knob, Taylor smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes.

* * *

The streets were achingly empty, if a bit destroyed. In a way, it felt a lot like the aftermath of a storm, clear, yes, but leaving ruin in its wake. Some houses were singed, others had been burned, trash cans had been toppled and scorch-marks left near where the mouth of the metal bin met concrete, ash spilling out as makeshift banisters laid unlit. She saw the occasional weapon, a bat here, a knife there, the broken fragments of a gun elsewhere, accompanied by a littering of charred torches, burned down like candle wicks, left at the roadside.

Dawn was just peeking through the buildings at the far end of the street when she arrived at the place where she had been hurt. The area hadn’t been taped off - not enough time for it, she expected - but the blood had been left, both hers and the targets, with little holes in the ground where they’d extracted her tinkertech and victims. It looked like an untouched crime scene, signs of a fight, of spilled blood and a struggle.

Her side pulsed to the beat of her heart, buried beneath not only her bloodstained costume, but the sweater and jacket she threw over that. It was cold, enough that it bit at her face - she’d left her scarf in the duffel bag - and each breath she made was accompanied by a swirl of fog around her face.

It was quiet, empty, but not peaceful. The lingering violence, it clung to the walls of her head, to her focus, like a parasite. She found it hard to swallow her own breath near where she’d been hurt, but then as much as she had deluded herself otherwise, she always did bend - _break_ \- so easily under physical violence. It had been, after all, what he had trained her to do, what he had twisted her into, what she had let herself become.

She wasn’t even entirely sure why she was here. Why she did the things she did, even. She could argue she had a plan to take down the Empire, but then that didn’t really ring true, did it? If she had wanted to take down the Empire, she would’ve targeted their capes, their homes, their businesses. Sure, it would’ve gotten her a lot of heat a lot quicker, probably got her killed sooner, but she could’ve. None of that was outside of her power, it wasn’t like arson was difficult when your power is so eager to fill your mind with tools that would do that and more.

No, no. While she would like the Empire to die, to fall apart, that had never really been her goal, had it? She never _had_ a goal. All she wanted to do was hurt people, and she did, that and more. To a point, she didn’t even really feel bad about it, the Empire was an institution that was older than she was and had its roots in American racism, something that everyone dealt with. She shouldn’t be expected to rip it down brick by brick, and yet...

Staring at her own blood spatter, Taylor didn’t really feel like herself. She felt off, almost detached, like she was entirely in the front seat of her own car. It was odd, but not unwelcome, it helped ground her, helped her be introspective, to reorient how she perceived things.

“I figured you’d come here,” a voice said, low and masculine.

Taylor flinched around, almost seizing for a moment as the world reoriented itself, as the sharp edges of reality pressed against her skin, as she wasn’t so distant anymore. Just behind her, on the other side of the street, was a man wearing little more than a pair of jeans, boots, and a metal mask that looked somewhere between a wolf mask and a welder’s. His chest was hairy, his body huge, bulked, and on each bicep he had a tattoo—’E88’ on the left, and a wolf superimposed over a swastika on the right.

It was Hookwolf.

He didn’t move, didn’t so much as take a step forward, but it was everything she had not to step away, begin to run. She hated herself for the moment of weakness, of fear.

Hookwolf rolled his shoulders in a languid shrug. “That’s the thing about most of the others, they don’t get how people like you think, how you _tick_. I didn’t either, until it got around how you responded to being hurt. I knew, after I heard what you did, how you got _physical_ , how you fuckin’ bothered to do more than kick on good men already down and out, that you would come back. You had to, after all, you’re a coward.”

Her hand reached behind her, tapped at her dispenser. It was emptier than usual, she knew, but she had at least ten darts, enough to maybe cut and run. She ran her finger over the form factor of the dart that fell into her hand, swallowed, just a normal one, it might not even really hurt him.

“So I stayed here over the night, just waiting, and right on time you appear.” Something changed in his voice, turning it dull, metallic. “I reckon once I’m done with you and bring you back, all of this’ll finally come to an end and I can get back to my pits instead of standing around all day being heckled by fuck-nothing morons in the PRT.”

She lashed out, shoulder aching, her servos creaking, the dart carrying itself forward. Hookwolf’s left arm collapsed in turn, almost looking like it was turning itself inside out as flesh pulled in and metal hooks and spikes pushed out, forming an incohesive mass of shifting metal weapons to the sound of groaning steel beams, lazily whipping his arm out, batting the dart aside. The rest of him soon followed, flesh collapsing inward, spikes and hooks pushing out, screeching as they caught against the concrete beneath him, making her ears ring. His form took on a shape close to a wolf, abstractly anyway, with claws and a body and a head, a low rattling snarl droning out from its center, likely where his core was.

Hookwolf lowered himself down, the growl growing louder, higher, filling the area with a tune not dissimilar to an engine, the rattling roar of something inhuman, something dangerous. Claws dug into the concrete, and something like a _laugh_ boomed out from the interior of the monster, warped and distorted by the metal, but distinctly a laugh. Mocking, cruel, like he was going to enjoy this, _enjoy her_.

Then he leapt.

* * *

[7 of 7]  
 _[Now Playing...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WACOEedACE)_

* * *

Scrambling to the side, Taylor barely avoided his landing, fingers catching on the gaps in the tiled sidewalk as she tore forward into a sprint, not looking back. Her shoes met concrete and her side lit up in a scream, she’d probably just pulled one of her stitches but her mind _did not care_ , did not even give it the time of day as she ran the length of the sidewalk. She could hear him now, his laughter louder this time around, the sound of metal shifting and ripping at concrete like nails on a chalkboard, dulling her ears, leaving behind a pained ringing that made her head churn unpleasantly.

She reached for one of her three remaining javelins, letting it drop into her hand and fold out to its full size. She just had to get enough distance away from him, just had to _run_ and get away. But he was gaining on her, he was faster than her _without_ the wound in her side, she could hear each heavy metal crack as his claws met the concrete.

She turned, biting down on a scream as her side lit up from the twist, catching Hookwolf just fast enough to throw herself to the side as he lunged again. She tripped, skid over the sidewalk and scrambled to her feet as Hookwolf’s metal body rolled like a liquid, shifting and churning as it landed without catching her, returning to that same wolf-like shape. She took the chance, reeling her arm back and letting her power guide her, throwing the javelin out in a straight line, the back lighting up, accelerating it into a black smear across the air.

Hookwolf turned, the javelin hit, shattered, torn to pieces as it was fed into the whirling mass of metal like a log into a woodchipper. After a few moments, Hookwolf turned his head to one side, spitting out a flurry of black metal shards, before turning his gaze back to her, the rest of her javelin falling out in pieces between the gaps in his form.

“We’ll pluck you like a bird,” he rattled, his voice distorted, loud, yet coherent.

Taylor swallowed thickly, flicked her eyes around the area. He was blocking off the forward path, she could turn and run the other way but she wasn’t quick enough, not with the wound, not even without it. Breathing in, she pulled her second of three javelins from her belt, not that it would do anything, but as a distraction, _just_ maybe.

She slipped the javelin around, holding it by the sharp end.

Hookwolf started up again, stalking forward, building into a sprint. Taylor angled herself, shifting onto her back foot as a howl erupted from inside of the monster bearing down on her, the sound lost behind the shifting scream of metal-on-metal-on-concrete, her ears ringing, her eyes narrowing down. Ten feet, eight, four, three—

He lunged, she stepped to the side and swung.

Her tech had one major failing that she’d never been able to overcome, and that was its inability to be used, in any capacity, in melee. Whenever she did, it failed, _catastrophically_ , explosively, fell apart into shards and pieces that cut her hands, and chastised her for thinking she could use a knife like an actual knife.

When her swing hit, the propellant end cracking against metal, much the same thing happened: the javelin _detonated_ , the tail end discharging its entire payload at once in a blinding flash of blue-white flame that sent her and Hookwolf reeling.

Her glove was torn to shit, the servos on that glove clicking in distress as she flexed her hand, dull prickles sparking along her fingers, but that was about it; Hookwolf wasn’t so lucky, fate or luck or some combination of the two sending him flying, skipping once, twice, three times off the ground, sliding down the street as claws tried to pry at the concrete, unable to get a grip due to some of the liquid propellant sticking like slick, molten napalm.

Turning, she didn’t give him time to recover, her legs pumping into a sprint fuelled by adrenaline and fear, the pain in her side retreating to a dull roar that she could almost forget about. She was at the end of the street in seconds, turning off as fast as she could, her breath harsh and thick in her throat as she made for the more busy part of the region, towards where people would be getting up and going to work, where someone would be able to call for help, anything at all to save her, to _stop this_.

This wasn’t a rich neighborhood, it was a _poor_ one, in reality, and people had to work and live whether or not they just watched their friend’s house burn down to little else than char and embers. She could almost hear the cars, distant and slow, meandering as people recovered from the atrocities of the night before and had to bury their trauma in their chests to keep paying their rent, keep going to school.

Her breath came out heavy, her side hurt, was wet and pained, but she could do it, she could manage it, she was maybe two or three minutes at this pace and away and _she would—_

The fence beside her exploded, metal shards cracking against her side, her head. Hookwolf slammed into her left arm, shifting blades ripping through the little defense her glove provided, into her flesh, carving furrows. She skid to the side, thrown from the impact onto the street, Hookwolf landing with her, his body crushing down on her, something in her arm giving with a sharp crack that sent pain across her body, her mind whiting for a second as it tried to figure out _what was going on_ before the pain sunk in like daggers and she screamed and he _laughed_ , rasping, triumphant.

He stopped shredding her arm, if only so that he could move his free claw, scraping along the concrete, metal fingers coming to rest on her shoulders, clawing through the fabric to another burst of agony, pain flickering at the edges of her vision in the form of dark, blotchy spots. His claws continued, cutting across her nape, collarbone, then coming to rest, shifting into a more human amalgam with joints along each digit, on her neck. He pressed down, hard, tightened around her throat until her heart thundered in her ears, her breath pressing against the blockage, a strangling panic tightening around her chest, screaming behind her eyes,, her head swimming, churning, out-of-focus. Black spots flecked her vision, not all of them from the pain.

Everything froze.

“We’ll find a use for someone like you,” he crooned - a dull, creaky noise - and for a moment, he was _Brent, straddling_ her, _holding her down,_ his fingers around her throat all over again. “Don’t worry.”

Something stepped in to fill her, something that was-but-wasn’t-her. She stepped out of her skin; she felt empty, void, metal fingers tightening around her throat, pressing her down, her weapons biting into her back, creaking. She couldn’t breathe, but then she wasn’t the one breathing, wasn’t in full control, couldn’t think about anything but the empty thoughts that swirled like white noise around in her head.

She felt herself reach down, the movement foreign and mechanical; felt her fingers tighten as they gripped a dart: a yellowjacket, one of the lethal ones. She didn’t so much as blink as Hookwolf released her throat, rumbling in satisfaction as the bulk of his lupine body drew back just enough that he wasn’t so much of an active circuit anymore. Her wrist flicked, and she watched with a sort of numb fascination as the shifting mass of blades caught the yellowjacket too, his laughter starting and then stopping as an unreasonable amount of electricity flooded metal joints, blue fingers of lightning flashing across his body, electromagnetism locking some parts of him up while it sent others flying wildly away, metal hooks turned to projectiles, crashing through a nearby window.

She rolled out from under him, still not entirely in control of herself, still not really sure what she was doing. She took hold of one of her more recent creations, sprinting forward as behind her Hookwolf screamed out in anger and frustration, only to shift on her heel and skid to a stop eight feet away. She threw, watched as the dart grew two, three, four, six, eight, ten and more times its original size, an exponential growth that meant instead of being hit with a slip of metal the size of a particularly long finger, what hit him was a dart the size of a person, mass and momentum throwing him back, pinning him to the brickwork behind him.

She watched him writhe, trying to shift around it, to dislodge himself like the liquid mass of solid metal he sometimes acted like he was. (She didn’t feel anything. she wasn’t afraid anymore)

Ahab fell into her hands, lengthened. She flicked it on, her gloves protecting her from the cold and warm shift, a dull click informing her it was ready.

Hookwolf paused, looked between her and something that, to everyone else, just looked like an identical javelin. He laughed, a shifting, rattling thing, didn’t even bother to try to dislodge himself at the sight of a weapon he had overcome before. Hubris suited him.

She arched her arm back, stepped forward, and threw.

Ahab sailed in a perfect line, unnatural, twisting through the air without friction, without even so much as an arc. It went through Hookwolf, bypassing his mass, ignoring the metal and penetrating into his core at high speeds, the dull embers of the propulsion system flickering out.

For a moment, nothing happened; then, with almost an abrupt suddenness, the metal that made up the wolf fell away, dropped like pieces, like a puppet with its joints popped off, landing on the ground in a loud chorus of clattering metal. His core, red and pulsating, bled from where Ahab stabbed through it, dropped now that the metal wasn’t there to support it, landing wetly on the concrete, rolling across the ground as Ahab passed seamlessly through the ground with each rotation, purple-black smoke curling as it did.

For a moment she just stared, not even really feeling the mangled wounds on her arm, the aching throb in her side. She still didn’t really feel like herself, felt empty and hollow and _distant_ from the moment. She flexed the fingers of her good hand, stared down at it with muted blankness, before the world started to click back into place. Pain, first, then the discomfort of being wet, then the emotional toll, the weight and fatigue and the fact that it hurt to breathe.

Piece-by-piece, the world reasserted itself.

Piece-by-piece, Taylor felt herself come undone.

Bile splashed over her boots as she lurched over, what was left of her dinner from last night coming out in four, five heaves. She staggered off the street and back towards the wall, stumbling as pain flared and her vision whitened. She toppled, shoulder bumping against the wall as she slid down-down-down, her legs giving out on her. Her gut wrenched, cramped, though this time nothing came up.

She heard the sirens, then, the sudden blare of noise as they rolled into place on the street. She glanced up, a van disgorging a small platoon of officers, all kitted in equipment. Above them, Dauntless flew in, in one hand a solid lightning bolt and in the other a shield that almost looked to be made out of concentric rings of white electricity. He glanced at her after a moment, then at the mass of metal and the core that had managed to roll down onto the street, weeping blood.

The officers approached, but none of their guns were raised. At the front, the sole woman without a helmet on walked with steady, sure strides. She had a severe haircut, black hair chopped back and short, and her face could be arguably described as somewhat hawkish. She looked between her and the core, much like Dauntless had, before shutting her eyes, gritting her jaw, and finally turning her full attention back to her.

“You’re under arrest.”

She began to laugh, couldn’t stop herself, giggles burbling from between her bruised lips, the sound of it scraping against her raw throat, creaking and unrecognizable, the ache from the metal fence hitting her igniting along her body, places where bruises would no doubt form.

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Sophia woke up alone. For a moment, there wasn’t any real panic, just a feeling that something was wrong, that she was forgetting something important.

Then the night flashed in the back of her eyes and she was out of her bed before she really even thought about getting up, Gumbo’s confused whine chasing her heels. She threw her door open, glanced around, finding no sign of Taylor, nothing. She sprinted up the stairs, two at a time, stumbling into the main living room to the sight of Terry bouncing Paula on his knee, both of them pausing to glance at her. She glanced at the clock—it was barely past nine.

“Have you seen Taylor?” she croaked out, running fingers through her hair, trying to banish the sleep from her mind.

“She went home,” Mom said, walking out of the archway that led to the kitchen. She was carrying a smoothie in one hand, which she passed to Paula, who immediately went at it, and a small bowl of cereal in the other, which she handed to Terry, who wordlessly took it and started piling it back. “She left a note. She seems like a nice girl, though a bit worried about things.”

Something about that didn’t sit right, but... still. Maybe, if she just went home, if she was just _worried_ , it would make sense, wouldn’t it? But... then, Taylor didn’t seem to be in the right headspace for that, to just let things lie, she wasn’t that type of person.

Walking to the other side of the living room, Sophia dropped down onto the couch beneath the window and pulled her phone out of the pocket of her sweats. She pressed her thumb into the power button, maybe she texted her when she got home, that’d make sense, if she just went home—

Almost instantly, it beeped. One beep, which could just be a notice, that was fine—two beeps, which, okay, a notice _for her_ , which wasn’t bad, then three beeps.

The entire living room was looking at her, Mom’s eyes narrowing, too smart for her own good. Three beeps meant an emergency notice, it went out to everyone connected to the network.

Swallowing thickly, Sophia flicked her thumb to the PRT app. It blinked into place instantly, a red notice.

_Hookwolf dead. Shrike in custody. Expect Empire retaliation. Called in Quarantine, Hoser, and Overshadow from New York. Emergency meeting at 13:30._

Sophia let the phone drop from her hand, right into her lap.

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a wrap for Arc 1: A-Track! It's been a ride. 
> 
> Following this, we're going to be stepping back into the past for a little while for a 4-part intermission. I hope you're all excited as I am for it.
> 
> Thank you all for reading, I hope you enjoyed.
> 
> Additional thanks to Lyrisey for the tremendous work they put forward for this chapter. Go read their stuff.


	12. SIDE-TRACK DAYMARE.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor chokes on the heat of summer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This author's note is being made outside of a spoiler because the upcoming chapters can and will explore themes of domestic abuse, emotional abuse, cult-like environments, and is in general possibly unsafe to read if you have triggers relating to topics such as those. Taylor, in these four chapters, is a girl who has spent the last year being emotionally groomed to downplay herself and believe herself to be at fault, she is not in a good place, but she is not aware of it. There will be explorations of physical abuse in later chapters as well, alongside possibly upsetting depictions of people trying to justify and downplay said abuse. If you are unsure if you would be able to comfortably read the following chapters, I ask that you wait until Daymare.4 is out, at which point I will be including a short summary of what happened in the prior chapters and use language intended to be clinical and detached from the emotions and things that took place to ensure readers can be up-to-date without possibly setting people off.
> 
> Now that I have that covered, be safe and enjoy.
> 
> Song Credit: In the Woods Somewhere - Hozier.

* * *

[1 of 4]  
[_Now Playing..._](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJdTRF5d94k)

* * *

_July 09, 2010_

Summer had come with a sort of fury that was usually reserved for myth, or after-the-fact mentions. It was a humid, chokingly _wet_ sort of heat, one that clung to everything, made every panting breath forced out through raw lungs like trying to breathe through water. The air was still, stagnantly so, they were far enough from the ocean that the wind _just_ didn’t quite reach, making everything feel like it was swimming in a sort of swampy fog, not that the day was anything but clear with blue skies and puffy white clouds.

Breathing out harshly through her teeth, Taylor hunched over as she finally crested the remainder of the grassy hill, panting out in wheezes. Her arm ached something fierce, a dull pain from dragging her suitcase up the side of a steep hill, and Tammi, not too far from her left, was no better, sweat sticking to her brow, though she was markedly less winded by the endeavour. Clearly, she had known what to expect.

Glancing up through curly, sweat-slick bangs, Taylor tried to really take in what would be her home for the next fourteen days. It looked... well, like a campground, just absent a lot of the fixtures she would’ve expected to see - trailers, tents and the like - and significantly larger. It was, primarily, surrounded by a wire fence, about eleven feet tall and with wooden poles instead of metal, looking somewhat roughshod. The interior of the camp itself was built into the shelf of the hill, a massive flat plane of dirt streets broken up by cabins varying in size, perfectly level on the ground, making it hard to see too far into the camp itself, but it was plenty large, even from a glance.

“What took you so long?” Brent’s voice drew her eyes, her head perking up. She glanced to her left, watching him approach, her face flushing as he shot a boyish smile in her direction, dimples pronounced, before glancing back at Tammi. She shot him a thoroughly unimpressed look, wiping blonde hair out of her face.

“Her mom wanted _assurances_ ,” she complained, her whine familiar and playful. “Kept me there for like, _three whole minutes_ trying to get across how important it was that she was kept safe.”

Taylor felt her face heat even more, the flush crawling to her ears. Why did her mother have to be like _that_?

Brent hummed, tilting his head aslant. “That’s good,” he decided after a moment, voice gentle. “Blood should protect blood.”

Blinking, Taylor tried to keep the confusion off of her face. That was... well, a _way_ to phrase that, she supposed.

Her boyfriend sent her another smile, this one a little mischievous. The familiarity of it was grounding, _that_ was the Brent she knew, quick-lipped, playful and quick to ease tension with a joke or three. She smiled back, trying not to feel embarrassed about how her cheeks pinched from the sheer intensity of it.

Tammi said something in return that she didn’t quite catch, drawing Brent’s attention back to his cousin, and Taylor directed her own gaze back towards the campground. Something nervous swirled in her chest, her anxiety a caged beast, swimming in circles, but she swallowed it down, let it drop like a fist of lead into her belly.

She would be fine.

Sure, most people at the campground were complete strangers, the extended family of Brent and Tammi, but that much was enough to vouch for them, for them to be elevated beyond _complete strangers_. Even then, she reminded herself, if something _did_ go wrong, her mom had packed that burner cell phone, hidden it away in her bag. Electronics weren’t really allowed - something about the family’s connection to the Amish and the fact that the camp was partially off the grid, meaning electricity had to be conserved - but Mom had been firm on the topic of the cell phone. She still didn’t own her own yet, and the burner was only if something _really_ awful happened and she needed to call in, emergencies only as it was, but it was still there if she needed it.

Breathing out, Taylor felt herself settle, the heavy weight in her stomach fading into the back of her mind. She was just nervous, anxious, but Tammi and Brent got that—they _understood_ her in a way most people didn’t. She would be fine with them, she was going to be bunking with Tammi _anyway_ and Brent promised to hang around with her every day if he could manage it.

“Alright you two,” Tammi called out, walking over. She extended one hand, motioning vaguely at the suitcase she had just dragged up the hill, Taylor handing it over without another word. Tammi shot her a rueful smile as she tugged on it a bit, apparently unprepared for the weight of two weeks of clothes and supplies. “I’m going to go put this in our cabin, you should go with Brent.”

Glancing towards the boy in question, they shared a smile.

Tammi rolled her eyes, muttering a good-natured “ _lovebirds_ ” beneath her breath as she, laboriously, began hauling Taylor’s suitcase off towards the only entrance into the camp, the metal gate that connected the two ends of the fence left propped open on a wooden stake that had been driven into the grass just a few feet ahead of it.

Turning her eyes back to Brent, Taylor felt shyness creep back into her system. The heat wasn’t helping, she felt a little winded and dizzy, it made it hard to focus all too much, her attention frayed. She wobbled a bit, and before she could even right herself, his hand was around her bicep, steadying her, closing the distance between the two of them.

Something not too far from a squeak slipped out of her mouth, getting a short laugh out of Brent. “You okay?”

“Yeah! Uh, just, yeah. I’m fine.” God, she hated that, hated how _completely_ useless she was at talking. It was either verbal vomit or being completely unable to speak. “Sorry.”

Brent just smiled, soothing, his thumb tracing gentle circles on her arm. “It’s fine, Taylor. The hill’s big and steep and it’s hot out, you have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

She could still smell the scent of cigarettes on him. If not for the fact that she was sticky with sweat and would probably adhere to him like velcro, she would’ve even been tempted to press her face into his shirt again, to feel the grounding weight of his arms around her shoulders.

“Thanks,” she breathed out, her head steadying, the world no longer so disorienting. “I think I’m fine now.”

His hand didn’t leave her arm, not that she minded. The small circles he was drawing over the sleeve of her t-shirt were helping keep her in the present, and the warmth of his palm was anything but unwelcome, even in weather like this. “We’re going to meet my parents,” he decided after a moment, glancing back towards the gate.

Uhm. Blinking owlishly, Taylor flushed a little. “Okay?” She wasn’t at all _prepared_ to meet them, honestly, but... well, if that’s what they were going to do, then fine. She could improvise, or at least keep her mouth shut so she didn’t say anything stupid in front of her boyfriend’s parents.

Which, really, knowing her, she would.

Tugging on her arm a bit, Brent started to walk, Taylor trailing after him. The sound of people grew louder the closer they got, a constant chatter of indistinct voices interrupted occasionally by the squeal of excited children. A pair, one blonde girl and a boy with a mess of curly brown hair, bolted across the dirt road that ran down the middle of the campground’s entry area, being chased by a significantly less enthusiastic blonde boy who looked to be maybe ten or eleven years old.

Passing by the gate, she turned to head to find a pair of older men watching the two of them. They had guns, assault rifles seemingly, propped up against the side of the building. Their expressions weren’t unfriendly, they even smiled a little at Brent, who waved at them before tugging a bit harder on her arm to hurry up, but the expressions were almost... _professional_ , in a sense, the sort of expression a cashier wears near the end of their shift.

“Why the guns?” Taylor found herself asking, sounding confused even to her own ears.

Brent looked at her, eyebrow slightly atilt, an unimpressed cast to his face. “Coyotes, mostly, well, them and other wildlife.”

Taylor flushed. Stupid. She should’ve figured that out.

As it turned out, even when staring at it from the outside, Taylor _had_ significantly underestimated the sheer size of the campground. Seemingly, it was primarily built off of the main dirt road that had a roughly spiral shape, if with a long straight tail that led into it. The area was completely flat, and at a closer glance clearly landscaped, hills and rock pulled away to level the hill into more of a plateau, and it was packed, almost like a smaller village, with cabins. The cabins themselves were colour-coded, sectioned off, with the area closer to the entrance having black roofs, the middle area having red, and the area they finally came to a stop near having white.

The cabin in question was larger than the ones around it, two stories and built almost like a mess hall, being rather long and not too wide. It was flanked by tall pines, and on the left side there was a fire pit at least six or seven feet deep, the dull scent of wood ash in the air. The door to the cabin was left open, and Brent led her inside without another word, revealing a wide variety of chairs, benches and tables arrayed in groups, filled with a small assortment of adults, most of them elderly, with wrinkles marking their face. Most seemed to just be talking, though she glanced a few card games being played, not that she was sure if it was poker or backgammon.

“Father!” Brent called out, waving his unoccupied hand to a man near the very back. He was definitely one of the older ones, looking in his late sixties, with thin wispy blonde hair crowning his head and cold, cold green eyes set into his face. Wrinkles lined his face, making his face seem harsh, gaunt in places and too-plump in others, and a series of scars poked out from beneath the collar of his blazer, old and long-healed.

He didn’t smile at either of them, but he did incline his head, which Brent apparently took as permission to approach. They came to a stop just short of the table he was seated at, and to the man’s left a woman with similar blonde hair in her mid-thirties at the most. Newspapers had been spread out across the table, crinkled slightly at the edge, with an odd-looking lump in the center that could’ve been because of something on the table or because the newspaper had wrinkled weirdly for one reason or another.

Finally, after what seemed like _minutes_ of silence, Brent’s father turned his gaze onto her. His eyes flicked over her figure, then slipped away with almost a dismissive slip of his eyes, close to rolling them but not quite. Taylor felt herself bristle, but Brent’s hand tightening down around her arm stopped her from showing it, the familiar ache keeping her grounded and blank.

“Father, this is my girlfriend, Taylor _Hebert_ ,” he spoke her name like it was French. Taylor froze a little, flicking her gaze to his, wondering _why_. He’d never gotten it wrong before. “Taylor, this is my father, Eugene Freidrich, and my mother August Freidrich.”

Swallowing down her confusion, Taylor plastered a smile over her face. Politeness never hurt anybody, after all. “It’s good to meet you finally.”

Eugene spared her another disinterested look before turning his focus entirely onto his son. “It’s good to finally meet your girlfriend,” he said, addressing Brent, not her, not even _looking at her_ , like she wasn’t standing within breathing distance of him. “Introduce her to your mother, I have to go speak to Stephen about the canteen.”

Brent dragged her back without a moment’s notice, almost sending her into a tumble. She stumbled on her back feet, clumsiness haunting her even now, and Brent’s grip around her arm tightened down to a stranglehold, hard enough to not just ache but to stab at her arm with pain. She bit down on a noise of complaint, eyes flicking towards Brent as she regained what equilibrium she had, but all he did was mouth ‘sorry’ at her, his grip relaxing ever-so-slightly, enough that the stab of pain turned to a deep, bruising hurt.

Eugene rose, patting down his slacks with his free hand while the other used the table to lever himself into a full stand. He had a slight hobble, almost a limp, as he stepped forward, but Taylor kept her awareness of it off her face, nearly freezing when he met her eyes and scanned her face. Eventually, with a huff of what sounded like amused scorn, he plodded his way down the rows of tables and benches, his stride steadying out into something more natural, no evidence of the limp to be found.

Brent fully released her arm, and both the blood in her arm and the pain immediately rushed in. She bit down on another noise, hating herself a little for it. The urge to raise her other hand and palm at the bruise was intense, she knew it would alleviate some of the ache, but she didn’t, knew better than that. Sometimes he just forgot his strength, and clearly, Brent respected his dad a lot - he called him _father_ , after all - and it would make sense he wanted everything to go right.

She had just fucked up, hadn’t moved fast enough. It had been her fault. She was fine.

Looking away from Brent, Taylor met August’s eyes and paused. She was a pretty woman in her mid-thirties - which, now thinking about Eugene’s age, felt... _off_ \- wearing a floral, conservative sundress that nearly went up to her chin. The only reason Taylor could think of that she wasn’t sweating out through the thing was that it had short sleeves, as it covered just about every other inch of her body otherwise.

Forcing another smile to her face, Taylor inclined her head a little as she stepped forward and out of the way of the path, just in case somebody wanted to pass by. “It’s nice to meet you.”

August smiled back at her, expression completely vacant, like she wasn’t even fully looking at her. Discomfort swam in her throat, but Taylor pushed it away, finding herself heartened by the reception at all, considering Eugene’s response.

“You as well, dear,” August said with a sickly-sweet, plasticky sort of kindness in her voice, not false, but not real, either.

Taylor wavered, glancing askance at Brent, who had a distant look on his face, staring out the window, looking almost bored, like nothing weird or unusual was going on. Following his gaze, Taylor froze a little at the sight of it: a single banner, floating over a cabin. It - the whole flag itself - was vaguely familiar, but she didn’t even really need to know _what_ it was, just that the black sun emblazoned across it in a stylistic scrawl, in the center of which a ‘3%’ was written in pure white text, was something nobody should be using on their flags, considering its history.

Turning her head a little, Taylor caught Brent’s eyes. He was looking at her now, gaze lidded and curious, an expression she knew well. He wore it whenever he was expecting something from her, good or bad, and she had never been particularly fond of it.

Swallowing dryly, Taylor smiled and knew it didn’t reach her eyes. “Yeah?”

Brent relaxed minutely, smiling back. It wasn’t that boyish smile that meant kisses or hugs or cuddles or all the other things she’d found she liked, the feeling of touching another person, of being in their presence, but it was markedly more familiar than anything else. “Nothing, I just like watching you.”

Taylor felt heat and discomfort mingle in equal measures over her skin, lighting it up with a sensation that was neither positive nor negative. “Oh.”

August tutted, smiling at them with those empty, empty eyes. “You two are cute together,” she said easily. “It’s good to have met you, Taylor. I think we’ll be seeing one another over the next few weeks.”

She strained to put a smile to her face, but managed anyway. “I hope so,” she lied.

August didn’t seem to catch her on it. Neither did Brent, who was usually better at picking up on her discomfort.

“Maybe I should go find Tammi?” she offered, which did at least get Brent’s attention back on her. “She’s bound to be set up by now.”

Brent smiled, fully relaxing. “Go and do that,” he directed, patting gently at the bruise on her arm, each feathery touch accompanied by a burst of painful pins and needles in the flesh of her muscle. “I think I’ll stick around until Father gets back. Tammi’s cabin is near the front, number twenty-one, it should be one of the few that aren’t connected to any other cabin.”

Taylor hesitated, that nervous feeling returning. It had been one thing to walk around the campground _with_ Brent, it was another to go it alone. She bit her lip, glancing at him.

Her boyfriend sighed, a low, almost disappointed note. “You can do it on your own, can’t you?” he asked, sounding almost frustrated.

“I’m sure she’ll be fine, son,” August cut in, eyes a touch more focused, though not on her. “Please, come and sit down, tell me about how your day has been.”

With almost a rueful smile on his lips, Brent left her side, walking over to the opposite end of the table where Eugene had been, settling down into one of two chairs. He sent one last look at her, eyebrow raised, questioning if she’d really turn this into a thing.

She didn’t.

* * *

At a second inspection, she was pretty sure the area was set up in tiers depending on age. The cabins the furthest from the gate were for the elderly, the cabins in the middle were for adults, and made up about sixty percent of the camp itself, before finally the group of cabins near the entrance were for children to teenagers. 

Finding Tammi’s cabin wasn’t that difficult, in the end. Retracing her steps back down the long dirt road, listening to the dull chatter of people talking, the smell of meat grilling, bugs chirping, it was relaxing. Even the ache in her arm settled down into something less ever-present, more of a tenderness that lit up whenever her shirt pulled too hard against that part of her arm or when she’d reached up and rolled her palm against the spot a few times, working some of the soreness out of it.

Brent was right about Tammi’s cabin. It was an outlier, defined by the meters of distance between itself and its closest neighbour, and it was ever-so-slightly larger, though every other cabin looked like it was intended to host up to four people, so she wasn’t sure what the difference made. Reaching down, Taylor double-checked the number on the door before turning the knob, pushing it open and being blessed with a face full of cooler air, if only because Tammi had pulled the blinds in the cabin, leaving the place dimly lit in the gloom, but blessedly cold.

The cabin itself was laid out such that the room seemed almost divided in half. On either side was a cot built into the face of what looked like a tall cabinet, with storage spaces both above and below the bed. The rest of the space was taken up by a bench, what looked like a chest that sat flush against the bed-storage-thing’s left side and a small table and chair that was pressed up against the corner of the cabin. This was mirrored on both sides, with the bed in the center between two curtain-covered windows with the rest of the furniture spread out to fill in the floor space.

Tammi blinked up lazily at her from her own cot, which was fully outfitted in sheets. Hers was untouched, obviously. “How was it?”

Clearly, Taylor didn’t manage to mask her expression quick enough, because Tammi laughed at whatever she saw.

“They can be a bit... intense, yeah,” Tammi said easily, folding one leg over the other as she balanced a hardcover book on her calf. “Eugene’s important to the family, a bigwig, so he is kinda distant.”

Well, that made as much sense as anything else did. Huffing out a breath, Taylor stepped in through the threshold and shut the door behind her, slipping her shoes off on the mat next to Tammi’s. Walking her way towards the bed, Taylor glanced at her suitcase, which had been left at the foot of the bed. Reaching down, she unzipped the front region, frowning a little at the state of disrepair, Mom had packed it and she usually wasn’t that messy but they had been rushing.

Whatever.

Pulling her sheets free from the top layer, Taylor maneuvered over to her bed, stretching out the bottom sheet to cover the relatively small mattress. It was a bit loose, just a tiny bit too large, but it beat it being too small and not fitting at all.

“Oh, right,” Tammi blurted, Taylor freezing mid-reach, fingers inches from the first of two pillows that she’d brought. “They took your phone, you’ll get it back after.”

Her focus twisted, her head turning around to stare at Tammi. She got a shrug in response, Tammi not quite meeting her eyes.

“No electronics, remember?” Tammi chided, eyes refocusing on the pages of her book, fingers creasing one page, folding it into a dog-ear. “It got you into a bit of shit, I think they’ll be a bit more suspicious of you, but it should pass. I vouched for you, after all. You’ll get it back once you leave.”

Taylor swallowed thickly, glancing back at her bag as she started placing pillows, trying to press down on the worry in her chest. She would be fine, Brent and Tammi were here, they cared about her, even if it twigged her out that someone had gone looking for electronics and found her phone and therefore made her someone who broke the very simple rules of the people who had allowed her to come along to meet the family, she would be fine. They cared about her. Brent liked her, liked her a lot, and Tammi was her friend, even if she could be distant sometimes.

She would be fine.

She had people here for her.


	13. SIDE-TRACK DAYMARE.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor chokes on the views of others.

_July 13, 2010_

Evening had settled in, leaving the campground - compound, she had come to realize - bathed in orange-yellow light, with shadows deepening, pooling in unseen gaps. The smell of propane and scorched meat choked the air, thick and vaguely nauseating, though she wasn’t sure if that was just her—she’d been having difficulties with her appetite over the last few days.

Trying not to bounce her heel against the grass, Taylor poked at the hotdogs she was cooking with the claws of her tongs, rolling them over to reveal the bark-like cooked undersides. Around her, the other girls at the camp did the same, mostly those near her age, though women in their mid-to-late thirties and forties crowded around the preparation table as well, setting up the food as they went.

Glancing up, Taylor caught sight of Brent. He was with the rest of the compound, the men and boys who were separated from the grilling area like there was an invisible divide between the two. Most of them weren’t really doing anything other than drinking, beer cases spread out across tables, cans already left in the grass, refusing to even consider helping the rest of them - _the women_ the invasive part of her mind pointed out - with dinner.

Today wasn’t the first big cook-out - there had been one when she had first arrived - but it was the first time she’d been conscripted into helping. The entire situation chafed, but it had been easier to ignore the distinct divide, the total disinterest in cooking, women forced to pick up after the male population of the camp, back when she hadn’t been involved directly, but now that she had slaved over a hot grill for the better part of thirty minutes her patience was starting to fray.

She still kept her mouth shut, though. It was easy enough to pack the feelings down, she wanted to fit in, didn’t want to embarrass Brent; it was easier just not to talk.

Turning her gaze away once it became clear Brent wasn’t focused on her - he was talking with another guy his age - Taylor stared back at the grill, wordlessly turning more of the hotdogs over before they could burn. Brent hadn’t been paying much attention to her lately, she’d mostly hung out with Tammi, squirrelling the day away in her room, reading what few books she’d brought with her and even going so far as to borrow one of Tammi’s, though she’d chewed through that over an afternoon and had ended up achingly bored for the day after.

The homesickness wasn’t helping anything either. She missed her mom, her dad, her bed, she missed the privacy and comfort her room provided; she missed her computer and her television. She missed Emma, but then she’d been missing her for longer than the four days she’d been here for. Not that it was healthy or particularly productive to focus on something like that, her relationship with Emma had been on the outs for half a year at this point; she’d withdrawn from that part of her life, there wasn’t anything left for her there.

Breathing out through her nose, Taylor shut her eyes and snuffed out that train of thought. This wasn’t the time or the place.

“Taylor?”

Turning her head, Taylor smiled wanly at Cassidy. She was blonde, like most of Tammi’s extended family, and about seventeen or eighteen and already married to a man ten years her senior—Lucas, a blonde-haired, broad-shouldered sort of guy. She was one of the nicer people at camp, and she was the one most closely related to Tammi and Brent. She’d been introduced to Cassidy on her second day there, in part due to that connection, but primarily because Cassidy acted as a de-facto leader for any girl under the age of twenty-one.

Glancing down at the plate Cassidy had extended in her direction, Taylor quickly began plucking the hotdogs from the grill, layering them across the surface one by one. They had come out a bit tough in places where she’d left them on the heat for too long, but they weren’t burnt, not like her first batch had been.

“These look good,” Cassidy praised, making her ears prickle with warmth. “I’m sure the boys’ll like them a lot.”

The good feeling ebbed away just as quickly as it had come.

Forcing some semblance of a smile to her face, Taylor said nothing, turning back to the grill and the stack of packaged hotdogs she had left to cook.

“Taylor,” Cassidy said, her voice trailing off, sounding worried. “Are you okay?”

Not looking up from her grill as she began to layer it with prepackaged, slimy hotdogs, Taylor nodded. “I’m fine.”

She wasn’t.

“I know this can be a bit of a culture shock,” Cassidy soothed, her hand coming to rest gently on her shoulder. “But you’re doing fine, nobody here is upset with you.”

It had taken some time and a few short, frustrated talks with Brent and Tammi to get used to the change in dynamics. People here were rural, obviously, with notions about where a woman’s place was. Women cooked and cleaned, men didn’t, were expected to have some hobbies but not others, all while having certain expectations about their behaviour and decorum. It chafed, for all that they had said it was harmless it didn’t _feel_ that way, but she’d gotten used to it, as much as she could, being her mother’s daughter and all.

Cassidy’s hand left her shoulder, and the sound of her walking away, the grass ripping beneath the treads of her shoes, grew distant after a few moments. Taylor breathed out a little too harshly, smothering a sigh in her chest before it could fully be pushed out from between her teeth.

She would be fine. It was harmless, she wasn’t in danger, she had to stop getting prickly around people who didn’t know better. Brent had told her that much, they weren’t doing it maliciously but because they thought it was the best way to keep women safe, and even if that itself was a reductionist view of things, she could understand that. Not everyone was raised in households like her own, some old and antiquated views on women still stuck around, handed down between generations.

She had to stop overreacting. If she didn’t, she’d just end up being the intolerant one, unable to accept that people lived in a way that didn’t fit her own, didn’t fit the way she was raised by an outspoken feminist mother and a unionist father. Not everyone could grow up in the city, not everyone _had_ those sorts of resources.

The sound of laughter drew her focus back up from the grill, on the other end of the field a good portion of the men laughing. Brent was among them, laughing bright and loud, completely genuine, and he even turned to her, locking eyes with her, his face going fond, soft. She felt herself relax a touch, the safety his attention provided grounding her, pushing back on the intrusive anxiety that had become a staple of her day-to-day over the last four days.

He liked her, and she liked him. In the end, that’s all that really mattered. His family was conservative, sure, and she didn’t like staying here, separated from the world, but that mattered less than him, than his affection and his advice. He anchored her, kept her stable, and she loved him for that.

Brent was part of her world, and she wanted to be part of his.

(Didn’t she?)

Taylor shut that thought down, not giving it the time of day. Not now, anyway; she could handle it later, after she went home.

Fingers tightened into her pant leg, giving it a tug. Diverting her attention away from the grill and her thoughts, Taylor blinked owlishly as a curly, blonde-haired girl, maybe three years old - at most - stared up at her with wide, curious honey-coloured eyes. She had one fist near her mouth, not quite in it, but close enough that her lips smooshed against pudgy digits, while the other tangled itself in the wrinkles near the knee of her pants.

“Dog?” The girl asked timidly, head atilt.

Taylor tilted her head back at her, glancing briefly at her grill. She flipped the hotdogs over to one of the raw sides, which should give her some time, at least. Turning back to the toddler, she left her tongs on the lip of the grill and crouched down, smiling gently at the girl. “Where’s your mom?”

The toddler blinked slowly. “Doggy?” She repeated, fisting at Taylor’s jeans a little harder, but not tugging.

“They’re cooking,” Taylor informed her gently, trying to sound sage. Her words got another few blinks from the girl, before she nodded resolutely, comprehension crawling over her features. “Can you point me to where your mom is?”

It took another few moments for the toddler to process the request, but to her credit, she did turn back around and glance towards the throng of women a distance away. Going rigid, the girl began to fidget, fingers twisting more harshly in her jeans, beginning to look overwhelmed as she kept scanning the crowd. Finally, glancing back at Taylor with teary eyes, she shook her head.

Alright, so that was bad. She had a grill to watch. “What’s your name?”

“Evie,” the girl - Evie - murmured around the fist she was now actually beginning to push into her mouth. Taylor gently took her arm and pulled it back and to the side to dislodge the fist, carefully avoiding the toddler spit all over it. “Ev’lyn.”

Evelyn, then. Okay, that was a pretty distinctive name, she could work with that. “Evelyn,” Taylor said carefully, smoothing one hand through the girl’s curly blonde hair, which seemed to soothe her marginally. “I need you to sit tight, okay? I’ll find your mom in a second.”

Waiting until she got another nod - Evelyn doing so as she sat resolutely on the grass, hand finally relinquishing the fabric of her jeans - Taylor quickly returned to a stand, flipped the hotdogs - just a little too dark, ugh - to the next rawest side and, glancing around, finally found Cassidy in the crowd, clacking her tongs against the metal a few times to get her attention before waving her over with them.

Keeping half an eye on the hotdogs, half an eye on the increasingly squirmy toddler, Taylor watched as Cassidy wove around the table where people were putting together the hotdogs, avoided two five-year-olds chasing one-another around in circles, and finally started to make her way over. Cassidy saw Evelyn almost instantly, visibly raising her eyebrows, but didn’t try to call out to her or comment on her presence, though she did pick up her pace, making long, confident strides.

“Who’s this?” Cassidy asked, once she was finally within speaking distance.

Taylor flashed her a relieved smile. “Evelyn, she lost her mother after she came looking for a hotdog.”

“That might be Trisha’s kid, then,” Cassidy murmured, glancing closer. “Has her mother’s hair. Evie, right?”

Evelyn, from her place on the ground, nodded at Cassidy. She made the universal gesture for ‘up’ among kids, arms outstretched, fingers opening and shutting gently, a worrying wobble to her lower lip. Cassidy, to her credit, didn’t miss a beat, swooping down and lifting Evelyn into her arms before maneuvering her around so that she hung off of the jut of her hip, the toddler visibly relaxing once she was tucked in against her.

“Gosh, you’re a big’un,” Cassidy crowed, speaking in a lilt that brought a babble of giggles out of Evelyn’s lips. “Growing up so quick, aren’tcha? Taking the incentive too, wandering over to the grills.”

Speaking of, Taylor turned back to her grill, confident she wasn’t about to somehow lose a child, and flipped the hotdogs onto their last side. She’d need a plate soon to move them off, but that could be handled far easier than a squirmy kid could.

“You’ll make such a pretty wife for one lucky guy,” Cassidy murmured, Taylor freezing. “Already eager to get cooking, and with that curly blonde hair of yours we’ll have to keep the boys off with a stick, won’t we?”

Taylor swallowed dryly, tried to pry her gaze away from the total devotion Evelyn was looking up at Cassidy with, her hands fisted in the other girl’s shirt. Different cultures, she knew, but... why did she have to be a _wife_? Why even talk about that? She was _three years old_ , had probably wandered over because she was peckish and toddled towards the closest source of food that wasn’t being overseen by an adult who wouldn’t let her get access to it.

“Oh! There’s your mother, look Evie!” Cassidy pointed off in the distance, then waved, a blonde girl with shoulder-length, very similar curly blonde hair glancing around wildly before her eyes landed on Cassidy. She looked maybe mid-twenties and had sharp bags beneath her eyes, her body visibly relaxing as she caught sight of her daughter and Cassidy, rushing over.

“Thank you _so_ much,” Trisha said, reaching out with both arms, Cassidy carefully plucking Evelyn from her side and handing her over. “She just ran off, I lost track of her for a _second_ and—”

Cassidy waved her off. “Trish, it’s _fine_. Taylor here kept her around until she could wave me down, she just got anxious when she couldn’t find you after wandering off.” That much was obvious just from how Evelyn burrowed into her mother, not saying anything but clearly incredibly relieved by her presence.

Trisha turned her eyes onto Taylor, a certain intensity behind them that made her want to disappear into the ground. “Thank you,” she said after a moment.

Finally managing to glance away, Taylor, with few other options, started piling the finished hotdogs on the paper plate she’d stacked the packages of them on, grimacing as she had to pile them into a small pile. She’d need to hand them off to the people putting the hotdogs together - mostly adolescent kids with some adult supervision - but she didn’t have to worry about that for now—

“I saw you looking at Evelyn,” Cassidy said after a moment, catching her eye. There was a certain twist to her expression, a ‘I-know-something’ cast to her features that put her weirdly on edge. “I’m sure you and Brent will have plenty of beautiful children, Taylor.”

The image of a girl with her hair and some of Brent’s features flashed across the front of her mind, accompanied by the heady _you’ll make a good wife_ echoing vacantly in the pit of her skull, spoken in her own voice. She swallowed back on the instinctive nausea, the bile in her throat, fingers tensing around the tongs until they started to creak, bending beneath the tightness of her grip. She couldn’t imagine it, not beyond anything more than a fleeting horror, exposing a child to _this_ , to a place that would give her the option of being a housewife or nothing else.

Trisha’s face came to mind for a moment, drawn thin, with bruises beneath each eye; a woman at the end of her rope, completely on her own caring for a child that _two_ people made, one of whom was too busy getting drunk with his friends not twenty feet away to take care of an overly-curious toddler. Taylor felt the insistent pressure of something awful against the back of her throat.

“I’m sorry, can you watch my grill?” she croaked out.

Cassidy frowned. “Taylor?”

“I just need some air, I don’t feel very good.” It wasn’t a lie, not that it would matter if it was. She didn’t leave Cassidy with a chance to reply, stumbling past her and towards the tree-line, fingers shaking as she tightened them into knots, barely able to keep herself from starting into a sprint as she finally went from the grass of the field to the dirt road, following it through the gap between the trees.

The forest trail didn’t actually stretch on for that long, but it didn’t need to, not really. She pushed past pine trees and undergrowth, following the curve of the road until it stopped just short of a waist-deep pond, one of the places where the kids tended to hang out during the day. The canopy above her blocked out most of the fading sun, dimming the patch of forest to the point where it was just a little difficult to see, just dark enough that she didn’t risk travelling off the path and deeper.

Reaching out to the nearest tree, Taylor pressed her palm into the rough bark, leaning against it as the muscles in her body tightened down to a knot.

She couldn’t imagine that. Having kids with Brent, _raising_ them like this, doing something like that was just... unacceptable, grotesque. It made her want to be ill, it made her head scream, she wanted to hurt something, wanted to _yell_ at something, wanted to tell the world that it was unfair that anyone would be treated that way, that she couldn’t imagine letting her own _child_ be treated that way.

A hand wrapped around her bicep, harsh and tight, yanking her back from the edge of the pond. Taylor shrieked, stumbling as her legs kicked out from under her, sending her sprawling to the floor even while the hand around her bicep didn’t relent, leaving her arm pulled painfully against its socket. The familiar intensity of the grip made her freeze, he always clenched too hard when he was upset, always underestimated his strength.

Above her, Brent stared down at her with thinly-concealed anger. “Get up.”

She swallowed, panic creeping into the edges of her focus. Her free hand was shaking, she could barely even move her legs—

“I _said_ get up!” Brent barked, yanking again, spurring the world back into motion as Taylor, heeding his words, staggered to a stand, the bottom of her thighs aching from the fall. He finally released her arm, and she flinched away from him, the pain in her muscle pulsing to the beat of her heart.

“You’re coming back,” Brent said, tone brooking no argument. “You have no _idea_ what it looks like for me when you just run off like that!”

“I ran off because I couldn’t stand it anymore!” Taylor blurted, the words coming in a burst, finally free. Brent would understand, wouldn’t he? He—he _had_ to, had to _get_ that this was too much, even for her.

Brent reeled a little, eyes going from angry to shocked and then back to angry. Something cold smouldered in his gaze, something threatening. Panic slipped in, he wasn’t getting it, she needed to explain, _clarify_ , he was on her side, he had to be.

“I stand around and cook while the _rest of you_ sit around and do nothing at all!” She babbled out, more things she’d kept buried, all to keep the peace. “I have to watch as things I am morally against happen around me, things _my_ family raised me to be more than! I get treated like an _object_ , like I’m lesser! I have to watch as little girls are raised to be _housewives_ not ten feet away from me and get spoken to about how _nice_ it will be when I was properly hitched when _I’m not even ready to have a family_ —”

Pain exploded across her cheek, sending her back. She stumbled, her footing uneven, and crumpled, one hand coming out to meet the slick slime of the mud around the pond, sinking in up to her wrist as she just barely kept herself from falling entirely into the body of water. She blinked up at him, confusion swimming over her focus, before the weight of what just happened set in. He just slapped her, he _just slapped her_ —

A sob choked out from between tightened lips, startling both herself and Brent. She felt another one force itself out, the stress tightening around her throat like a vice, the pain making her eyes sting, her cheeks growing wet. It _hurt_ , the entire left half of her face ached like she’d just gotten a carpet burn.

Brent opened his mouth, wavered, shut it. “You had to calm down,” he said after a moment, tone carefully blank, burying his anger until it was a barely-noticeable thread. “You know that, right?” The unspoken _so I slapped you_ unvoiced but very much there.

Her vision swam as she tried to find something to say in response to that, that it wasn’t okay to hit her, that he was wrong, that she had perfectly justifiable reasons to be upset, that _calming her down_ didn’t mean slapping her, but none of it came out. She was just trying to _explain_ , trying to talk things out, to _get him to understand_. It wasn’t okay to hit her, even if she did do something wrong. She watched his hands, watched how they tensed and untensed at his sides, ready to be used, ready to hurt her.

She could hardly breathe around him, her chest was tight, she wanted to run, he towered like a _monolith_ and _she couldn’t focus._

“We’ll talk about this once you’ve stopped making a scene,” Brent said, tone flat. He wasn’t even looking at her, his eyes instead scanning the long dirt path. “Just go back to your cabin after washing the mud off.”

Then he was gone, pushing through the foliage and making his way back down the path, and Taylor was completely and utterly alone.


	14. SIDE-TRACK DAYMARE.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor chokes on her own words.

_July 17, 2010_

The grassy length of hill stretched on just beyond the fence, separated from her with little more than woven metal wire and wooden stakes. Hell, the gate wasn’t even closed, she could step out and be down the hill before too many people caught on, and onto the highway by the time someone made a fuss. All it would take was the conviction to do it, the willingness to risk being hunted down by Brent’s family. Something she didn’t have in her.

Tucking her legs together, Taylor let her forehead rest on her knees, eyes shutting. She pressed her back a little harder into the wood of the cabin she was leaning against, fingers curling around the hairs of grass that jut out from where the concrete foundation of the structure met the earth, her index finger and thumb coming to rest around the stem of a dandelion, tugging just hard enough to pop the head clean off.

Avoiding Brent had become something of a science at this point, since that night. Initially, he had seemed just as interested in staying away from her as she had him, but over the last couple of days he had become... _insistent_. She’d always managed to slip away before he could confront her, but it was only getting worse, more constant, dogging her around every corner. The only reason she felt safe being outside and _open_ was because he was apparently busy with something today, not that she’d been given any more details than just that.

Peeling her sweaty forehead from the knobbly surface of her knees, Taylor turned her stare back to the fence not five feet in front of her. It felt almost mocking in a way, she was mere inches from freedom, and yet... if she ran, they’d know. They checked in on her frequently, always watched, and if she couldn’t find someone who would willingly pick up a hitchhiker, or at least let her use their phone, they’d be able to drag her back, and then Brent would be there, scowling, angry, _disappointed_ —

No. She wasn’t about to think about that. He wasn’t here right now, she was alone, safe as much as she really could be, boxed in by the compound.

Huffing out through her nose, Taylor turned the dandelion head over in her hand, staring down at the bundle of yellow strand-like petals. Pressing her thumb into the core, she folded her other fingers in, crushing it down into a pulpy mess before letting it fall from her hand, landing in the grass near her shoes in clumpy pieces.

God, she was bored. That was maybe the worst part, she had been at the compound for a little more than a week at this point and she was _bored_ , achingly, painfully bored. Between the boredom and the close shaves with Brent, she constantly felt off-balance, swinging between spending hours wanting anything at all to do and minutes of weaving through crowds of people, nearly running, all to avoid Brent and his demands that they _talk_. She wasn’t _ready_ to talk to him, not after that, not _here_ especially; maybe when she got home, there could be a more nuanced discussion about what he did, but...

Curling her arms around her legs, Taylor buried her face against her thighs. For a moment it was quiet, the distant chirp of bugs, the heady weight of the sun on her skin, the barely-there wind that curled against the grass, making it sway against the skin of her legs. Peaceful was a word for it, but peaceful in the sense that a forest is; not _safe_ , just... natural.

Footsteps broke the moment, Taylor pulling her face away from her thighs, glancing off towards the sound. Tammi, equipped with a large can in each hand, smiled at her as she approached, her blonde hair pulled back into a tail, wearing a sleeveless t-shirt, shorts, and some running shoes.

Wordlessly, Tammi came right up to her side, stopping only to crouch and then sit down, extending one can in her direction. Taylor took it, rolled the chilled thing over in her hand, the Arizona Iced Tea label staring back up at her.

“I think we need to talk about what’s bothering you,” Tammi said after another moment of silence, pausing to angle her can away as she bent the tab back, breaking the seal to the sound of a _crack_. “That and why you’re avoiding Brent, anyway.”

Doing the same to her own iced tea, Taylor gave herself a few moments of acceptable silence by bringing the lip to her mouth and taking a long, careful drink.

Tammi shot her something of an unimpressed look, apparently catching on to her ruse.

Sighing, Taylor widened her legs, keeping her hands around the can but resting it between each thigh. “He hit me,” she confided after a few seconds, voice quiet.

Tammi motioned at her to continue, taking a drink from her iced tea.

“I—was trying to explain why I had to leave,” she managed to get out, feeling the weight in her chest lighten, the words coming easier, more clearly. “Why I couldn’t stand around there, listening to them talk about a three-year-old like that, about my _future_ like that.”

Drawing the can away from her mouth, Tammi turned fully to look at her, brown-gray eyes staring directly at her. “Then he hit you,” she echoed.

Taylor nodded mutely.

“It’s how he was raised,” Tammi said bluntly.

She curled a little further into herself, until the can of iced tea between her thighs threatened to leave bruises. “That doesn’t make it okay,” she whispered hoarsely, fingers shaking as her mind flashed back over the moment, not for the first time.

“And yet, even if you think it wasn’t, I don’t see you saying anything or making a scene about it,” Tammi interjected flatly, her words like little knives. “This is the first time I’m hearing about you being hit, you didn’t make a scene, didn’t try to tell someone, didn’t _rebel_ , and we _both_ know why.”

Taylor flinched, nearly dropping the can from between her thighs. “You’ll have to deal with it too,” she pointed out, trying to bury the pain from that rebuke.

Out of the corner of her eye, Tammi visibly rolled her eyes. “Yeah,” she said dismissively. “Maybe.”

She clearly didn’t think that, but... _why_? Brent’s dad was important, maybe Tammi was more important than she was letting on, was the daughter of someone important, but... _still_. That didn’t quite make sense, she was _still_ a woman and by their own prejudices, she was lesser for it.

Turning and opening her mouth to say just that, Taylor froze. Not too far away, Brent stood, hands in his pockets, looking casually bored as he stared at the two of them. Behind him, two guys - vaguely familiar - stood shoulder-to-shoulder, blocking off the way out. Snapping her head around, Taylor saw the same on the other end of the cabin, two guys standing in her way, boxing her in.

Tammi rose to her feet, smiling apologetically down at her. “You two needed to talk,” she justified, taking a quick sip of her iced tea. “You weren’t going to let him, so... I had to do _something_.”

Something like tears burned at the back of her eyes, not quite watering, but close. Her chest constricted, and it took a lot to swallow down the hurt, the sudden sense that she was alone, that not even Tammi cared, that nobody would listen or respect her boundaries.

Brent smiled at Tammi as she passed by, mouthing a ‘thanks’. The two guys at the end stepped aside to let her through, then folded back in, leaving just her, Brent, and four onlookers.

Before she’d even really thought it through, Taylor was on her feet, her breath coming a bit too quickly, shallow puffs of air that weren’t getting her enough oxygen. Her iced tea spilled to the ground, tipping over and soaking into the heels of her shoes, into the dry, grassy ground, a barely-audible _glug-glug-glug_. She swallowed once, twice, took another step away, tightening her hands into fists at her side, if only to stop them from shaking.

“Taylor,” Brent coaxed, his voice trying at warmth but not quite reaching her. “We need to talk about what happened.”

Taylor breathed in, tried to put any of her thoughts into words, only for them to fizzle out on her tongue like pop-rocks.

His warm - _gentle, soft, nice_ \- smile twitched at the edges, grew forced. “Conversations aren’t one-sided, dear,” he tried again, the familiar pet name doing nothing for her, ringing hollow when not a week ago it would’ve made her skin prickle giddily.

When she couldn’t bring herself to say anything for a second time, his smile faded, gravity pulling at the edges of his lips and eyes until his face had settled into an annoyed, disappointed frown. “Taylor,” he repeated, his voice edged with a warning. He took a step forward, just one, and unbidden, uncontrollably, she flinched.

Everything stopped for a moment, Brent’s eyes narrowing, Taylor’s breath catching in her throat, her body tightening until it felt like a wire pulled almost to breaking.

“You were never going to listen, were you?” Brent grit out, taking another step forward, then another. Taylor scrambled back but he was in her space already, hand reaching out, catching her upper arm and _tightening_ until she nearly went limp like a cat being held by the scruff of their neck. “I don’t even know why I bother trying with you.”

She tried to speak, tried anything, but the words died on her throat, never made it past her brain and into her mouth. He pressed her back, forcing her spine into the rough siding along the cabin wall, his hand tightening around her bicep until it lit up in pain. She couldn’t quite hide the noise of pain, couldn’t bite her lip bloody enough to contain it, the sound leaking out from between clenched teeth.

“Since you don’t seem to want to talk or have a discussion like _adults_ ”—the word was punctuated with another harsh press, almost a shove, into the cabin, her back burning from the force, her throat closing up, chest tightening, terror wrapping around the stem of her throat like a _noose_ —“I’m going to _tell_ you what we’re going to do going forward. Are we clear?”

She choked out a breath, tears pushing themselves into the forefront of her eyes. She needed to get away, _she needed to get away, she needed to get away, please stop hurting, please please please pleas—_

“ _I said, are we clear?!”_ Brent bellowed, spittle flecking across her face.

The fear in her chest cracked. “ _Yes!_ ” She sobbed out, each breath coming out as a wild heave. “Yes, yes, I’m sorry, please—please I’m so sorry.”

Brent let her go, Taylor crumpling to the grassy floor, pulling in on herself, arms tightening around her torso in a mockery of a hug, knees hunched in, tears burning at the fringes of her eyes. She wheezed, needy little gulps of air which broke into shuddering sobs, not quite able to stop the flood of emotions that slammed into the front of her skull like a battering ram, her head aching, pounding, her eyes burning.

“Good,” Brent rumbled, crouching down just enough to get eye-level with her. “To begin with, you’re going to stop avoiding me. I’m going to arrive at your cabin in the morning and you will accompany me until something comes up or I think we’ve spent enough time together. Are we clear?”

Taylor choked out another noise, clawing at herself, trying to collapse in on herself, to disappear. Hands tightened back around her bicep, clenched, reigniting the ache, reinforcing the bruise.

“Conversations are two-way streets, Taylor. Say _yes_.”

Sucking in a breath, Taylor shakily nodded. “Yes.”

Brent let go of her arm, letting it drop back down to her side. He smiled at her, his warm smile, a mask, now that she knew to look for it. “You will never insult my family again, or their practices.”

“Yes,” Taylor squeezed out, curling in further, sucking down another wheezy sob.

“You will listen to what I tell you and _do_ what I tell you to.”

“Yes.”

“You won’t talk back or raise your voice at me again.”

“Yes.”

“You will eat dinner with my parents and I every night.”

“Yes.”

Brent smiled at her, forcing his hand through the tangle of limbs she’d tucked around her torso, pressing the calloused, rough surface of his palm into the groove of her jaw. He tilted her head up, slid his hand until it cupped her cheek, one thumb brushing away at her tears, both shed and unshed. “See? That wasn’t so bad. Can you see how we can work out our problems if you just _talk_ to me?”

Taylor hiccuped, another sob forcing itself out from the pit of her throat. She nodded into the palm of his hand, tried to find comfort in the familiarity of it.

“ _Taylor_ ,” he reminded, voice thick with intent.

“Yes.”


	15. SIDE-TRACK DAYMARE.4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor chokes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary at the end of the chapter. Stay safe.

_July 21, 2010_

Brent’s cabin was larger than the one she and Tammi shared, and not by a small amount. It was actually closer to a house, if a very small one, with electric lighting, a large bed, a bathroom, and a sitting area with a large enough table to seat at least four people. Unlike the other cabins, the floor of his wasn’t floorboards layered over rough concrete, but rather had a more intricate design to it, made out of a dark, glazed wood that looked rather expensive.

Flinching minutely as another object shattered against a wall at the far other end of the cabin, Taylor tried not to let any of the pain from leaning too much against her hip - it still hadn’t fully healed over from when he’d shoved her into the wall less than two days ago - show on her face, expression carefully vacant and flat as she watched Brent continue to trash his room.

The shards of what looked like part of his alarm clock clattered dangerously close to her socked feet. She kept her legs pulled together, hands folded gently over her lap, her shoulders relaxed and her posture straight. Nothing she was doing would give him a reason to hurt her, not that it had stopped him before. She felt blank - had been _feeling_ blank for four days at this point - out-of-body, distant from the moment, like she was out of sync with the flow of time by a few tenths of a second, just enough to be noticeable. It was neither pleasant or unpleasant, it just _was_.

The shattered remains of Brent’s alarm clock hit the wall for a second time, exploding into a spray of shards that scattered across the table, clattered onto the floor to the sound of someone spilling poker chips. He let out a noise of rage, lashed his fist out and met the wall, cracking his fist against it hard enough to bleed, if the smear of red across scuffed white wallpaper was any indication.

Taylor wasn’t even really sure why he was like this, to be honest. He’d told her to remain in his room while he went off to meet people for a meeting of some kind and had come back with a sort of rage she’d only seen once or twice before, though thankfully for once she hadn’t been the one to screw up and have it aimed in her direction. He was just _angry_ , and she could do nothing to stop him, nothing to console him, because it was her place to sit and be quiet while he worked through his anger. Those were the rules.

Brent finally came to a stop, his breathing deep and ragged, his fists tight at his side. He just stood there for a while, each rise and fall of his chest a noticeable movement, jarring him up and down, his shoulders taut and broad, imposing. His breathing lessened, eased out, but not entirely, still carrying behind it a jagged sort of intensity that put her on edge, made her wary as he turned to look at her.

She tried not to writhe as the bruises along her body - cuffing her arms, the pain in her right shoulder when he’d pulled it too far, the split lip from a backhand, among plenty others - lit up in wordless remembrance. It was easier to do than it had been the first few times, easier to blank out the aches, turn them into distant white noise that buzzed and pulsed along the surface of her skin like a live wire.

“Do you know what they’re saying? Brent asked, voice thin and reedy with hate.

Taylor shook her head, her thoughts vacant. “No.”

He laughed, sharp and brittle like the scattered fragments of his alarm clock. “They keep saying that I’m not _ready_ , that just because I don’t have _powers_ , that I _couldn’t control you_ , and that was why they were pushing my initiation back until the end of the next school year. Do you think that’s fair, Taylor? That I’m suffering for _your_ fuck-up?”

“No,” she repeated, voice just as flat as her expression, as empty as her head. It was hard to pay attention to all of his words, to the full context of what he was saying. But, then, it didn’t really matter _what_ he was saying, did it?

“Of course it’s not,” Brent snapped, pacing back and forth, each step a jerky stomp, restrained violence hidden beneath each footfall. “But _no_ , because of you, because of _me not having fucking powers_ , nothing gets to go right. It’s bad enough that they don’t treat me with the fucking respect I _deserve_ , but now they have to treat me like I’m _weak_.”

Taylor felt her eyes drift off-center, staring over Brent’s shoulder as he paced back and forth like a caged animal. His words spilled into white noise, a constant backdrop to a show she was watching from over her own shoulder, not quite material, more like a shade of herself, curious if only because there was little else to look at. Even then, she wasn’t really _looking_ at anything; the way her vision tunnelled in around the edges, unfocused, told her that much.

But Brent still spoke, and she still sat, rigid and perfect so he didn’t have a reason to _correct_ her or to get into her space. She absorbed none of it, of course, the words might as well have been spoken in Japanese for all that she understood them, his voice spilling into her and leaking out just as quick, never lasting long enough for her brain to process. She didn’t _need_ to listen, didn’t think she could even if she did; he wanted someone to yell at, a microphone, something beyond the void to scream into, and she was little more than that.

She didn’t care if he started or if he stopped, if he grew angrier or if her presence really did calm him. None of it actively mattered, even if it maybe should. She just felt placid.

“— _are you even listening to me?!_ ” Brent screamed, his face red and cramped in rage, eyes flinty.

Taylor turned to him, blinked slowly. “Yes.”

Brent’s face twisted, pulled inward, lip drawn back as he bared his teeth in a snarl. Comprehension dawned over his face - for what, she didn’t know - and every muscle in his body pulled taut, fingers clenching and unclenching at his side. Whirling around, Brent tore his hand across the table, fingers tightening around the plastic fragments, his body arching as he turned back and threw, plastic cutting through the numb, the emptiness, as burning lines of pain lit up across her arms and face.

Focus returned, and with it pain. She crumpled back, a scream on her lips as she pulled her hands up to protect her face, the sudden, aching awareness of the present, of _reality_ blooming across her skin. Every bruise, every bump, _every scrape_ like little needles, anchors that kept her from slipping back in.

She could hear Brent more than she watched him approach, the stomp of his shoes across hardwood as he closed the distance between them. He wrapped his hand around her ankle, hauled her free from the bed, sending her to the floor with another yelp of pain.

“Get up,” he snarled, his face so close, so angry and red and _disgusted_.

Taylor scrambled to her feet, nearly tearing the bedsheets off of the bed to do so. She could feel the blood licking down her arms, across a cut on her cheekbone, but she ignored it, couldn’t bring herself to wipe at it even as the blood began to pool around her lips, her tongue catching copper as it instinctively tried to wipe them clean.

Brent lanced forward, palms slamming into her chest as he shoved her back towards the wall, away from the bed. It shoved the breath out of her, broke the spreading numbness, her head buzzing, oversensitive, chafing against the world around her. She wheezed, air coming in hoarse chokes as she tried to work oxygen back into her lungs.

“You have _no right to ignore me!_ ” Brent screamed, pressing into her space, his face bare inches from her. He wrapped his hand back around her arm, tightened down until it ignited one of the several rings of bruises he’d left, each of them their own aching torture, painful in a way that made her vision nearly whiten. She couldn’t help the scream this time either, it slipped out with a sudden burst, like her throat might explode if she kept it down. “Do you _fucking_ understand that, you stupid bitch?”

“Yes,” she croaked, short of breath as the panic started to settle in.

His palm cracked across her face hard enough to make her neck twinge, enough for her glasses to jump from her face, landing on the ground with a clatter, only remaining on her feet because of Brent’s unrelenting grip on her arm. What was she doing wrong? She didn’t know, _she didn’t know, she just wanted him to stop_ —

“Shut up! Don’t you _dare_ ignore me!” Brent bellowed, and she wasn’t, she couldn’t, even without her glasses he was in her face, nearly breathing over her skin, his face a rictus of rage. With a yank, he pulled and swung her around, her foot just narrowly missing stomping on her glasses, releasing her arm mid-swing and sending her stumbling, her knees cracking against the wooden board of the bed, her hands pressing into the cotton of the sheets. She didn’t even know what part of the bed she was on anymore, the world was spinning, she was only starting to get her breath back—

“Sit the fuck down!”

She did, jostling forward, tucking her legs into themselves, quick as she could, rote memory carrying the motions less so than the panic she felt. In seconds, she was sitting, just like she had been before, the entire room a blurry, soupy mess of colours and indistinct shapes and little else.

She couldn’t see it, but she could hear his breathing: deep, heavy, barely-restrained breaths, never growing any lighter, any shallower. He was angry, _so_ angry, his hate like knives and she the block.

Terror like chains kept her locked in her own body, weighted and heady, her fingers prickling as blood finally ran the circuit down her arm from where it had cut in near her bicep, pooling in her palm, on his bed. She tried to track the blood, but the buzzy incoherence from the disconnect started to slip in, tore her attention away from it, and without her glasses she couldn’t anchor herself on something else, on anything in her range. She could already feel her eyes sliding off, her skin crawling as she stepped out of it, ready to hide again, ready to find that _peace_ —

Brent’s hands closed around her throat, pushing her onto her back.

For a moment, the disconnected faltered, confused. He was straddling her hips, hunching over her, pressing his weight down and tightening his fingers, forcing her back into her skin, chaining her down as her breath cut out and the pain of breathlessness hit her straight in the head. She choked, writhed, panic set in like a bushfire, crawling across her body, she reached up, tried to pull his fingers away only for him to press down harder, for his fingers to tighten, for her world to narrow.

She saw his face, even through the black spots, and knew, knew just from the curl of his lip, the hate behind his eyes, that he would kill her. The fact settled into her bones, soaked into her marrow, her muscle, and began to scream, every part of choking, writhing in panic as black continued to flood her vision, the world going murky, her head buzzing as she writhed and kicked and tried to push him off without any effect, her pulse thundering in her ears like a funeral dirge.

He just kept clenching and holding and her limbs weakened and twitched and _she couldn’t get him off she didn’t even know how long it had been since it all started and—_

The door to the cabin flung open with a bang, and suddenly the hands were gone. Her first breath was torture, screaming agony as broken and bruised muscles around her throat constricted and warred against one another. Her next was worse, like drinking fire, the pain in her chest so severe she rolled off the bed in a writhe, knees and elbows slamming into the hardwood with fleshy, hard cracks, pain swimming across her vision. The third was no better, a choked off croak that barely got out of her lips before she was sucking in air through tortured muscle to try again, to get anything in there, because she was going to die, because he _was trying to kill her and she could do nothing about it_.

She heard footsteps approaching, flinched forward, coughing on her own desperation.

“Shit,” the voice was familiar, was Tammi’s voice, not Brent’s, she wasn’t safe, never ever safe, Tammi wasn’t safe, hadn’t been, wouldn’t be, but she was safer. “Fuck. Just. I’m getting Cassidy. She can fix this.”

“No,” the words came out of her lips before she could think better of it, before she could realize that she was back talking and being rude and that she would be _punished for that please no please_.

“Shut up!” Tammi snapped, voice tinged with something like panic, something awful. “Fuck, just, ten seconds. Try to breathe or fucking whatever.”

Before she could try again, before she could even get the words out, she heard her leave.

Her next breath died into a cough, choking on her own spit as her throat throbbed erratically, pulsing with and against her heart, a broken tempo that made it hard to focus. She felt her arms give out on her, forehead meeting the hardwood painfully, the pain forcing the swallowed air out of her lips in a wheeze. She sucked in again, breathed out, each breath a fight she had to win to get it through, each one bringing clarity back to the fore, each one making her heartbeat thunder in her head, making the knowledge that _Brent is going to kill her_ roar in her ears, smothering all else besides the sound of her own pulse.

She tried to keep her breathing steady, to some effect. Every other breath petered off into a choked rasp, and none of them came as easy as breathing normally did, always feeling like she was breathing through a straw, like the air just couldn’t get through, and when it did, it _hurt_. It hurt like nothing she had experienced, more than any grab, any shove, any _hit_ , it hurt and _he was going to kill her_.

She sobbed out, the noise messy, more painful than coughing.

“Shh,” someone murmured, careful hands coming out to touch her. She hadn’t even heard them arrive, the voice was female, it wasn’t Brent, it was Cassidy, the warm hands, gently drawing her up with surprising strength, orienting her body, coaxing her onto the bed. Something hard was pressed into the bridge of her nose—her glasses, she could see but her eyes were blurry, the lenses smudged, her focus too broken—and Cassidy’s face, worried and pulled taut, stared back at her.

Another sob burbled up from her chest and this one she choked on, tasting blood on her lips as she coughed into her palm, a shock of agony riding through her chest. Hands clenched down around her arms - and for a moment she was back there, being held down, being choked - to stop her from writhing, the panic bubbling, the memory too bright, flashing against the back of her eyes.

“Shh, shh. Taylor, it’s going to be okay, alright?” Cassidy soothed, gentle hands releasing her arms once again, the bed pressing down as Cassidy joined her, gently held her to the side. “I need you to promise me something, okay?”

Taylor rattled her head back and forth, she didn’t care, would promise the world if Brent just didn’t come back and—

“You can’t tell anyone about this, okay? Not even the other campers, or Brent’s parents.” A hand pressed itself into the back of her shirt, palm splayed wide, and something like warmth leapt from it, curled into her body like a cat, purring and buzzing, spreading out until it pressed against the underside of her skin like a second pulse. The pain immediately began to blunt, her next breath a rasping gasp that brought with it a flood of oxygen, her head clearing, the fog lifting, her body bubbling and humming as something filled in the gaps Brent had left behind.

“See?” Cassidy murmured, gently directing her head to the side. Just to the left of Brent’s bed was a full-length mirror, and in it, a girl - her, she was the girl, she was _alive and Brent hated her and was going to kill her_ \- bruised and battered, her throat with an odd, grotesque dent in it, gradually began to heal. The wound on her cheek closed, then her arms, then the dent, and with it air, her throat stopped burning, the agony in her chest, the bruises along her arms, legs, it all faded away, vanishing beneath the coaxing purr of that healing, of that power. “You’re all better now.”

A wail ripped itself out of her throat thoughtlessly, and Cassidy tucked her in, hugged her tight, arms wrapped around her and maneuvered her so that her eyes were left buried in her nape, wet spots left where her eyes pressed into sun-warmed, pale skin. She cried, each sob ripped from the back of her throat, pushed out with enough force to jostle her chest, to break her a little more, cracks spreading as she clutched and tried to calm, tried to soothe herself as Cassidy rubbed circles into her back.

“You know he loves you, right?” She murmured, the words not quite sinking in for a few moments, horror making everything in her freeze over. “He was just upset, he couldn’t control himself.”

Taylor couldn’t bring herself to say anything, the words choked on a blockage that was no longer there.

“It’s our duty to carry those burdens,” Cassidy continued gently. “It’s _your_ duty, and he loves you, and it’s not your fault. He will be better next time, so long as you are yourself. It’s how we exist, Taylor, it’s the cost for the sins we are born with.”

She wanted to fight that, wanted to yell and scream but there was nothing left in her. She was hollowed out, empty, the shell of a bug left over from its moult. She didn’t even have enough energy to move, to push Cassidy away, to do anything but sink into the soothing murmur of her tone, her eyes shutting, so heavy, the world weighing her down.

“This won’t happen again,” Cassidy said, almost to herself. “Not like this. But I need you to be there for him, Taylor, he was as hurt by this as you were, he’s upset as well, you understand that, don’t you?”

Taylor did nothing, said nothing, just laid there, limp and tired and achingly _void_.

“Taylor,” Cassidy coaxed, no warning in her voice, still gentle.

Blinking up, Taylor let herself crumble, let it all spread out like spiderweb cracks, let the resistance fade from her body.

“Yes,” she croaked, hating herself for feeling good when Cassidy smiled at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taylor arrives at the compound after being driven over by her mother, meets Tammi and Brent. Tammi takes her luggage away, Taylor goes with Brent to meet his parents after he tells her they're going to, not giving her a chance to say anything else. Taylor notices Brent's mother is uncanny and seemingly empty-eyed, but says nothing. Brent's father is extremely dismissive, Brent grabs Taylor's arm hard enough to bruise it more than once. Taylor returns to her cabin to find that her emergency phone was taken, as having electronics was against the rules and they searched her bags just in case.
> 
> Days later, Taylor is forced to cook with the other women while the men sit around and do nothing. She is bored, and making hotdogs, and is getting increasingly frustrated that she's forced into a position on the basis of misogyny, but tries to understand that these are rural people and not everyone is raised by a feminist for a mother. A toddler who had gotten away from her mother - named Evie - comes along, asking for a hotdog, and Taylor waves Cassidy over to help her find her mother. Taylor notices Evie's mother looks haggard even while her husband is happy getting drunk with his friends, not bothering to take care of a child. Cassidy tells Evie that she'll make a beautiful wife one day, and takes Taylor's uncomfortable staring as to mean she's interested with having kids, claiming hers and Brent's will be 'adorable'. Unable to handle the thought of her child being raised in an environment like this, Taylor rushes off after cleaning her grill and finds her way to a pond. Brent confronts her, angry that she ran off and how that reflects on him - as her boyfriend - and she tries to explain that she was upset and she couldn't handle being in a position like that, only to be cut off when he slaps her. He tells her to go back to her cabin after cleaning off the mud that got on her when she fell over.
> 
> Days later, Taylor is avoiding Brent after their confrontation due to fear. She is sitting against a cabin near the front of the compound, with a fence in front of her, looking out and wondering if they would find her if she ran. Tammi approaches, gives her some iced tea, and they talk about what Brent did to her. Tammi points out that Taylor hasn't told anyone or tried to rebel against what he did, and they both know why she hasn't (out of fear), which clearly (it doesn't, but Tammi's a nazi) means her own feelings matter more than her morals. When Taylor turns to rebuke her, she sees Brent and finds out that he has had four friends box in the two exits, and it becomes clear Tammi was distracting her so Brent could get into place. They have another confrontation where Taylor is scared by Brent, who uses her terror to make her agree to several restrictive promises which further extends his control over her. He smiles at her at the end and says "see? If you'd just talked to me, we can work out anything."
> 
> Days later, it is implied Brent has continued to escalate his physical violence against Taylor. Taylor is dissociating, sitting on Brent's bed, as he trashes the area because he was told he wouldn't be able to do his initiation due to Taylor's own disobedience and the fact that he doesn't have powers. When it becomes clear that Taylor is mechanically responding to everything and not really listening, Brent lashes out, hitting her with several shards of an alarm clock he broke, breaking her dissociation, and hauling her off the bed. He pushes her around, and then slaps her when she responds with "yes" (she was responding monosyllably while dissociating, so he takes that to mean she's ignoring him again) before pushing her back towards the bed. Taylor begins to dissociate again, before Brent finally attempts to choke her, looking as though he will kill her. He heavily wounds Taylor's throat, and is only stopped when Tammi forces her way into the cabin, after which he rushes out. Tammi runs off to get Cassidy to help while Taylor coughs on the ground, barely able to breathe. Shortly after, Cassidy arrives, gets Taylor to sit on the bed, and reveals that she's Othala by granting her regeneration after Taylor promises not to tell anyone, healing the damage Brent has done to her over the last four days. Cassidy then tells Taylor, while she's vulnerable and reliant on her as the only person who hasn't hurt her, that Brent loves her, and that he needs her, and emotionally manipulates - whether or not it was intentional - her into staying with Brent, even after her near-death experience. Scene end.


	16. B-TRACK 2.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor meets a hero, Sophia worries.

Truth be told, Taylor remembered very little of the drive to the PRT building. What she did remember wasn’t very coherent, memories of having her arm wrapped in a gauzy fabric, bound tightly so that the break in her elbow didn’t get any worse, flashes of them putting cuffs over her wrists, of them leading her into the back of the van with careful hands holding her upright, probably because she hadn’t been able to stand on her own two feet. She remembered getting looked over by one of the PRT officers on the trip over, one with a red cross sewn into the shoulder of his uniform, but he didn’t say anything to her, leaving her with just the vague notion that he was there to make sure she didn’t bleed out in transit.

The texture of a wall was the first thing that really sunk in since the fight, however long ago that was. It was hard to explain when and how her brain transitioned from a sort of empty white-noise, filling her ears without meaning, into something with actual thoughts and opinions and contexts, but it did. Begrudgingly, to be fair, it was a slow process, starting first with the opinion that the off-beige walls were ugly if clean-looking and building from there, to the general complaints her brain was picking up from her body, shocks of pain from a broken and mauled arm, the exhaustion she felt, the general sense of malaise that had soaked itself into her marrow and muscle.

Slowly, painfully, _reluctantly_ , the world pulled back into focus, like broken shards of a window being forced back into place, the edges fusing with each new piece added, clicking together, giving more of an insight into what was beyond it.

Piece-by-piece, breath-by-breath, Taylor found her center, and not for the first time, she wished she really, really hadn’t.

The room they had her in was uniform, a sort of cube with linoleum floors, off-beige concrete walls, and a ceiling with a flat panel recessed into it which generated light. The room was notably vacant except for herself and the stretcher-like bed they’d placed her on, rough cotton blankets scraping against her skin as she shifted and fidgeted. The absence of any toilet or sink at least told her this wasn’t a holding cell, and the general aesthetic of the area made her think _hospital_ , though not a good one: maybe a prison’s hospital, or the nurse’s room in a middle-income school.

The silence of the place was deafening, only ever cut through when the urge to fidget would overcome her self control and she’d rock a leg or her hips or move her arm and the metal frame of the bed she was on would creak. Her ears just about sung with it, a pitched keening that refused to recede, grew ever-louder the more she acknowledged it and the silence it was spontaneously generated from. Boredom, a sure sign that she was leaving a dissociative episode, slipped in to fill the gaps of her mind, and not too long after Taylor found herself trying to count the grains on the ceiling above her, anything to take her focus away from the piercing agony in her arm.

It could’ve been minutes, could’ve been hours, but time slid by at an uneven and unpleasant rate. There were no windows, no clocks, likely to prevent Tinkers like her from making something out of it, not that the cuffs wouldn’t’ve stopped her from doing that, seeing as her still-functioning hand was cuffed to one of the metal bars on her stretcher, while her other one wasn’t looking at having workable finger dexterity for a good couple of weeks, if the white-hot pain that flushed down her wrist and to her elbow whenever she tried to move said fingers was any indication.

The sound of the door opening nearly made her cry, not that she’d admit it.

Turning her head, Taylor watched pensively as the door to her room - a thick, bulky thing that slid apart in pieces, folding away until all that was left was a metal archway - pulled apart, revealing a pair of officers, decked to the nines, and a haggard-looking brown-haired girl in a white robe. Panacea, it wasn’t hard to place a name to the face or the outfit, though what _was_ hard was concealing her surprise at seeing her. She hadn’t really expected them to call in or request New Wave, not for her, but then what little she could remember of the gouges carved into the flesh of her arm maybe warranted it.

Panacea strode in with a sort of weight to each step, plodding came to mind, so did _tired_. Behind her, the officers stepped through the threshold, though they stopped at either side of the doorway, rifles held at the forefront of their bodies, an unsubtle warning if she had ever seen one.

Stopping just short of the foot of her bed, Panacea reached down, just out of her line of sight, her hand returning clutching a clipboard tight enough to whiten her knuckles. She didn’t even bother to look at Taylor first, just began paging through the paper that had been clamped to the clipboard, lips slightly pursed, looking increasingly unimpressed as she went through page-after-page of what was likely to be a record of what injuries they believed she had.

Finally, Panacea let the pages drop, turning the full brunt of her attention onto her. Now that she was closer, it was easy to pick out the purple bruises beneath her eyes, the pale cast to her skin that wasn’t quite able to be hidden behind the splotchy freckles that covered her cheekbones to the bridge of her nose. Frizzy brown hair peeked out from beneath her hood, looking unstyled and messy, like she had just been woken up and hauled over to do this.

If it was early enough, she might very well could’ve been.

“May I have your permission to use my powers on you?” Panacea finally asked after another few moments of blank staring, pausing only to tuck the clipboard beneath one arm.

Taylor nodded.

Something vindictive flashed over Panacea’s face, though it didn’t last very long. “I need verbal confirmation,” she said slowly, drawing each word out.

Taylor swallowed, flicking her tongue over chapped lips. Her throat hurt, bruised in that grotesquely familiar way, but it wasn’t heavily wounded, not as it had been. Her head swam as she opened her mouth, her first attempt at a “yes” coming out more like a croak, a broken groan of incoherent pain. Her second was closer to the mark, but the garbled scratchiness clearly didn’t pass muster if the way Panacea just lifted one eyebrow wordlessly at her was any indication.

Wetting her lips for a second time, Taylor swallowed down some of her own saliva, drawing on what little physical stamina she had left. “ _Yes_ ,” she finally managed to get out, the word hoarse and croak-like but vividly comprehensible, even if she slurred the ‘s’ at the end until it sounded like she was hissing.

Wordlessly, Panacea stepped around from the end of her bed, hand reaching out, fingers reaching through the rip left over from her knife wound and pressing flesh against flesh. For a moment, nothing really happened, her body didn’t buzz, didn’t twitch or hum as it had with Othala, didn’t fill with energy and begin soaking into her wounds. Instead - and the feeling would haunt her for the rest of her life, weird and stomach-turningly uncomfortable - a few seconds after the first contact with skin, her flesh began to shift, sculpt itself back into place, her wounds smoothed over, the sensation almost identical to what Taylor thought it might be like if her body was clay and someone was using their hands to shape it. Bruises faded, cuts pinched closed, her body was rebalanced, parts of her diminishing to heal the rest.

A second later, Panacea pulled her hand away. “There,” she said, voice flat, bitterness sliding into her expression. “You won’t even have a scar.” Regret, almost, but not quite, had buried itself into her tone.

Taylor breathed out, gulping in air as, with the absence of the pain and the stronger pulse of blood in her veins - had she lost so much? - her head refocused, sliding entirely into the present, the world reorienting itself with crystalline clarity.

“You’ll have to eat a lot today, enough to make up for what muscle I had to strip to heal your arm. You’ll also need protein and a small source of calcium,” she spoke like she was reading from a list, like the entire interaction had been rote and uncomplicated instead of uncomfortably and bizarre. Her eyes were blank for a moment, before with a shake of her head, she stared fully down at her, something twisted and profoundly _acidic_ slipping into her gaze, turning her eyes almost gimlet. She opened her mouth, clearly about to say something, before shutting it with a click, her teeth almost bared.

Taylor swallowed nervously, shifting back on the bed a little now that she could move her back and arm without screaming in pain.

For a moment, Panacea almost seemed like she would do something, like she’d lash out, before with a shaky exhale, she slumped. Bringing her hand up to her own face, she wiped down, pulling the bags at her eyes until Taylor could see the red of her eye socket. Turning away and taking a step towards the door, she halted for just long enough to look back at her, lidded eyes thick with pain and something hostile. “I hope you’re _proud_ of yourself,” she spat out harshly, each word spoken like a curse. “For all the good it’ll do the _fucking_ gang war.”

Then she was gone, shoulder slouched, hands in her pockets, leaving out the way she came, the officers going with her. The door didn’t shut, however, remaining open, a viewport into a boring concrete hallway, a door identical to her own - if closed - just visible across from her own. For a moment, Taylor let herself listen to the sound of receding footfalls, only letting her head drop back to the crinkly, plastic-covered pillow once they grew too faint to hear.

The grains on the ceiling didn’t seem so interesting anymore.

“Excuse me?” A voice called out, drawing Taylor’s eyes back down. A woman, maybe mid-forties, smiled in her direction, copper hair pulled back into a bun. She was leaning out from just beyond the threshold of the metal archway, fingers clasped around the opening, but not quite entering the room itself. “Do you have anyone to call who can act as an adult representative for an upcoming meeting? You are not under any obligation to unmask yourself to anyone through those choices, as while you have been brought into custody, you are not being convicted with anything as it stands. You may also decide not to, and you will be granted a lawyer either way, we just think it's best to give you and others your age the option.”

That...

Glancing back up at the ceiling, Taylor breathed in, let her eyes shut. She was here now, wasn’t she? She’d killed someone, there was no real place she could go from here, not really. She didn’t want to make her parents freak out about her absence - if they weren’t already, anyway - so she could just, tell them, right? Better late than never.

Hopefully.

“Yeah,” she said, surprised by how level her voice was. “I have a number you can call. They’re my parents.”

* * *

She heard her parents arrive well before she actually saw them. The arch had been left open, meaning sound trickled in from the other end of the hallway, and though she could make out close to none of the conversation, the voices involved were more than familiar and the intensity they spoke with, almost arguing, was enough to prepare herself for their arrival.

The first through the door was Mom, almost flanked by a pair of officers who looked a bit haggard trying to keep up with her. She staggered when she saw Taylor, her eyes scraping over her body, over the bandages and bloodstains and rips and tears that lined the surface of her costume, then to her hair, her eyes, her mouth. Mom brought a hand up to her own, a soft little noise leaving her, pained and _hurt_ and _scared_ before she rushed forward, closing the distance between the two of them and wrapping her in a hug.

Nose buried against her mother’s neck, Taylor didn’t have a chance to see her father arrive, but she heard him. He choked, a sharp noise, and the heavy tread of his boots across the floor echoed as he got closer, though he didn’t close the distance like her mother had, coming to a stop at what sounded like a short distance away.

Mom squeezed her tighter, wrapped her in the familiar, safe scent of home. “Little owl,” she murmured oh-so-gently, voice cracked around the edges, not disappointed, not even really hurt, but so, _so_ worried. “I’m so glad you’re _okay_.”

There was a short, impolite cough from somewhere behind the mass of them, the family reunion crumbling apart. Mom pulled away, hands trembling as she dropped each arm to her side, stepping away so that Taylor could get a better look at who was talking. A portly blonde woman, skin pale, breath laborious, stood in the middle of the room, her face tense, though not showing much in the way of emotion.

“Mrs. Hebert, Mr. Hebert,” the woman said politely, if a bit roughly, glancing between her parents for a few moments before her eyes finally came to rest solely on Taylor, staring almost through her. “I am Director Piggot. I believe we have things we need to discuss about the future of your child going forward.”

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

“Is he really dead?” Missy asked, perched on her knees on the cushion of the couch, her arms hanging over the back of the couch, staring intently at Carlos.

He squirmed a little beneath the intensity of the gaze, before finally pushing a sigh out from between his clenched teeth. “Yes,” he said reluctantly, glancing briefly down at his own hands. “When they pulled the weapon Shrike had made out of his core, the entire thing just... unravelled. It was full of his body parts, most of them with huge holes in them, but it was definitely him.”

Missy made a noise, contemplative if a bit disgusted.

Sophia shifted in place in her seat, folding one leg over the other. She hadn’t even brought her costume - though she had her mask on hand in the event she needed to see someone who she wasn’t already unmasked to. She brushed her hands over the fabric of her pant leg, tried to banish the faint echo of Taylor’s blood from it, only partially managing it. Those moments were still fresh, still sharp and pronounced in her mind’s eye, the feeling of pushing the needle through, the dull whine of pain that had escaped Taylor with every new stitch—

“You okay, Soph?” Missy was staring at her now, so were a lot of people. Blinking, she caught sight of her hands, tangled up into tight balls, hard enough to nearly rip at the fabric of her sweatpants. She forced her hands to unclench, watched as the wrinkled patches along the length of her calf smoothed back out into flat fabric.

“Yeah,” she lied. She wasn’t fine, she was the opposite of fine, she was _worried_ , viscerally fucking worried. Taylor had been arrested, was likely being processed as she sat here, because she had killed someone. _Taylor_ had killed someone, Taylor who had once only been Emma’s friend, who had looked at her like a broken, tired thing not too long ago, perching on the chair, barely managing to keep herself awake. She had probably done so in self-defence, sure, but... she still killed someone, and as far as Sophia could tell, that sort of thing lingered, that knowledge that you snuffed out one life, even if it meant keeping the flame of your own active.

Breathing out through her nose, Sophia tried for a smile, though it probably came out looking like a tired grimace. “Just worried.”

Missy took that at face value, but Dean, a few chairs down, narrowed his eyes suspiciously at her. 

He always was too nosy for his own good. She shot him a look, dark and bitter, as hateful as she could manage it. He faltered for a moment, opening his mouth and shutting it wordlessly, eventually glancing away with a tired slump of his shoulders. They had an agreement, to one extent or another, that he’d leave her problems _alone_ so long as she made it clear she wasn’t invested in his support or his advice. That agreement had come into practice after he’d tried to ‘fix’ one of her issues and it had ended with her breaking his nose in front of Challenger in a fit of pique.

She’d gotten nearly three months of console duty out of that and nearly double the number of therapist visits, but it had also stopped him from digging too deep into any of her problems, though god knows he sure _tried_ , felt entitled to her problems like she felt entitled to breathing air. Maybe it was part of his power, maybe it was because he was raised by a rich family and had a complex about helping people. She didn’t know, didn’t really think it mattered either.

He’d shut up and keep his concerns about her feelings to himself if he didn’t want another broken nose, that much was for certain.

“Does anyone know how Shrike’s handling things?” Dennis piped up, eyes still firmly glued to the phone in his hands, though what he was so absorbed with over the last few days was anyone’s guess. He’d been uncomfortably secretive about what it was, just claiming it was _something he was working on_ , whatever that meant.

Carlos shook his head, leaning back into his chair a little. He shut his eyes, breathing out loudly through his nose, head tilting up before finally letting his eyes open again, scanning the metal ceiling. “I heard her laugh,” he said after a moment, voice quiet, uncomfortable. “I thought she was crying, but... no, it was just laughter. She sounded...”

“Unhinged?” Dennis offered.

Sophia flexed her fingers against her leg, this time to do more than banish the feeling of sticky blood between her fingers, the flare of protective annoyance unwelcome but, at this point, not really unsurprising. Dean shot her another look, one loaded with meaning, and she managed to pry her hand from her leg to flip him off. He looked away first, like he always did.

“Not really, more like she was completely unable to handle the situation and was having a breakdown.”

Dennis snorted. “So, unhinged.”

“Don’t argue, you two,” Missy bit out, a bit more harshly than she normally did. Dennis looked a little offended, but never dragged his eyes up from the surface of his phone, his thumb pushing along its surface in steady sweeps.

There was a short pause where nobody really said anything, where the room finally became silent after what felt like _hours_ of noisy discussion. The emergency meeting wasn’t for another few hours, but with the exception of Kid Win - who was apparently _still_ in his lab - just about everyone was present, if not necessarily totally happy about being here.

Sophia sunk into the silence, shut her eyes, and prayed that nothing else would go wrong today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to B-Track, or Arc 2 of _My Fake Girlfriend is a Vigilante?_.
> 
> I wrote the chapter primarily to ease people back into the current for the fic. As it stands, 2.2 will likely come out soon, though probably not today. B-Track will be less combat oriented than A-Track was, and more about the consequences of Taylor's actions and where she's going to from here. The tone is intended to be lighter than Daymare (which was Arc 1.5), but still a little darker than A-Track.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!


	17. B-TRACK 2.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor sits through a meeting, Sophia tells the truth.

For all that the PRT HQ had the general aesthetic of a middle-income office building in the industrial part of the city, there were little inconsistencies, aspects of the design that showed the true colours behind its bland exterior. The elevator was, perhaps, the most vivid among them; it was unreasonably large, two or three times as tall as she was and wide enough to fit six or seven times the capacity of a normal elevator. She wasn’t really sure _why_ , but something about an elevator with legroom just disquieted her, left her feeling like she had stepped through a totally normal door and ended up in a room where the chairs were as tall as she was and meant for somebody far, far larger.

“Arms out,” the PRT officer - his little badge read Lawrence Jacobs - said easily, motioning vaguely at her with the key in his hand. Obligingly, Taylor offered up her cuffed, bare wrists - Hookwolf had not only ruined her gloves, after all, he’d also torn at the bodysuit beneath them - limply, staring at the man in front of her with a lidded, loose sort of intensity.

Wordlessly, he slotted his key into the metal bar between her wrists, the cuffs popping free with a slight hiss. His other hand flashed down, catching the cuffs before they could fall, folding the restraints in half so that each crescent-shaped cuff laid over one-another, before wordlessly clipping it onto one of the rungs of his belt.

Working her wrists in stiff circles, Taylor rolled her shoulders back and let her muscles relax minutely, working a few of the kinks she’d built up since they’d put the things on her shortly after she left the room with the stretcher. Mom’s hand, resting gently on her shoulder, moved to her back and smoothed over the wrinkles and rips in her bodysuit in gentle but firm sweeps, helping to work just that much more tension out of her body. She almost felt normal, or at least she did until her brain inevitably slid back to Hookwolf and like clockwork every individual muscle in her body would try to strangle itself in wordless panic.

Dad wasn’t a physical person, though it wasn’t something she’d inherited from him. It didn’t mean he didn’t care, he was showing as much support as he could within his comfort zone, standing close to her, defensive and protective, his presence almost a weighted thing, the tense posture he wore like a suit of armour; something she could almost _feel_ even when she wasn’t looking at him. He hadn’t said anything to her or to anyone else for that matter since he’d arrived, and she knew he probably wasn’t totally impressed with her at this moment, but at the very least she was close to absolutely certain he was in her end of the ring for this much at least.

(He had to be.)

Flicking her eyes up, Taylor watched as the elevator soundlessly crept up another floor, as indicated on the LED screen just above the door. They had quite a few left to go, and though she had neither felt nor heard the elevator begin its rise, it seemed to have taken a blow to the speed it could move at for the cost of seamless transit. For all that the space itself helped, the distance between her and Piggot and her two guards, she could hardly stand the atmosphere that was beginning to thicken in the elevator, a tangled knot of anticipation.

All she had to struggle through was twenty-three floors. Twenty-three slow, painfully awkward floors.

Maybe the speed of the elevator was for security concerns? Because like, it’d make sense if they were intentionally made slower to stop people from riding it all the way to the top before they could put together a reasonable response. It still made the elevator really weird to be in, the slow ascend coupled with the huge size of the thing just left her feeling fundamentally out of place.

“Taylor?” Mom murmured quietly, pausing in her gentle broad strokes along her back. Turning her head around, she blinked inquisitively at her mother. They were nearly the same height, hell, she was almost taller. When had that happened? How hadn’t she noticed—no, not the time.

“Yeah?”

Mom’s smile strained, but didn’t falter. “You were just looking a little out of it. I was just making sure you were okay, after...” Her eyes pointedly avoiding the bloodstains along her costume.

“We’ll figure something out, kiddo.” Dad rumbled, speaking for the first time since she’d seen him. His voice was level but tense, protective. Her chest warmed in relief, a deep breath puffing out from between her lips as she felt something in her relax, Mom’s hand steadying her as she swayed a little back, her legs no longer so invested in keeping her upright.

The rest of the elevator ride was... she’d struggle to call it _better_ , but easier. It was just as slow, just as awkward, she could feel the stares of the two PRT officers, weapons still clearly bared, even through the face shields they wore, and Piggot barely moved an inch from where she’d come to a stop next to the buttons that controlled where the elevator went, but it was less tense. She didn’t want to claw out of her skin so much anymore, didn’t feel like she was being escorted to the gallows, though she couldn’t quite banish the comparison from her head altogether.

That wasn’t to say that when the elevator doors finally opened - revealing a long stretch of barren hallway, one door at the far end of it, walls that off-beige and pockmarked - she wasn’t the first one out of the thing. As much as it had helped, she still felt out of place, smothered in the interior of that metal box, and even if it might rattle some of them for her to suddenly jerk forward and escape the elevator - if the way the PRT officer traced after her was any indication, probably to make sure she didn’t try to run away on foot - she didn’t really _care_ much about their opinion, not right now.

Once everyone had filed out of the elevator, Director Piggot wordlessly motioned them onwards, walking down the stretch of hallway. She could just barely make out the sign on the door at the far other end, _Director Emily Piggot_ etched into a bronze plaque, set into a generic white-painted wooden door. She didn’t even need to unlock the thing, simply reaching down and twisting the knob, pushing the door open to reveal a spacious, if utilitarian office. The most luxurious thing in it was the black-leather computer chair, as even the table - a blocky, metal thing with a computer on it - seemed to be the same sort of standard PRT furniture she’d peeked on her walk over to the elevator.

Stepping around the desk, Director Piggot carefully lowered herself down into her chair, the creak of leather and metal echoing out into the otherwise quiet room. After a moment to seemingly catch her breath and reorient herself, the director motioned with one hand towards the three chairs that sat in a line in front of her desk. “Please, sit.”

Mom took the left, Dad the right, and Taylor let herself get squished in between them, her mother wordlessly tangling their fingers together once they’d all gotten situated.

Leaning down, Director Piggot dialled in a few numbers on the blocky landline on her desk before plucking the phone from the receiver, pressing it into her ear with one shoulder, tapping in a few more keys. Taylor could almost hear the dial tone in the absence of anything else to listen for, though even that quieted once Director Piggot adjusted her posture. “Send in Enrica Penner to my office. Yes. Thank you.”

She put the phone back, the plastic clattering.

Turning her full attention to them finally, Director Piggot leaned forward, folding her hands together. “Your lawyer will be just a few seconds.”

Dad shifted, glancing placidly at her mother. Mom raised a silent eyebrow in return, and Dad glanced back towards Director Piggot, his jaw rolling carefully. “Is she affiliated with the PRT in any way?”

“No, she is not,” Director Piggot denied, voice careful. “Your daughter was assigned one the second she came into our custody, however, her stay in the medical wing was long enough that I was made aware of her name.”

Dad relaxed, however minutely, though the suspicion didn’t quite leave his stare. Whatever wordless conversation he and her mother had had, well, Taylor wasn’t quite so sure, but her mom did seem noticeably more tense, her fingers tight - if not painful - in their grip on her hand.

A short burst of knuckles-on-wood broke the tense silence that had followed her father’s question, nearly startling hard enough to slip off of her seat, barely kept in place by the hold her mother had around her hand.

“Come in,” Director Piggot called out, voice carefully even.

The door swung open, and Taylor glanced back just in time to see the woman in question. She was a particularly short lady with a crop of auburn hair that had been sheared short, though left fluffy, curling around her nape. She was very pale, at a second glance, with dark, brown-black eyes and a thin body clad in black pants, heeled shoes, and a white blouse that collared her neck, with long sleeves that had been rolled up to her elbows. Tucked beneath one arm she held a folder, while her other hand had buried itself comfortably into her pocket, thumb just barely exposed.

Enrica smiled at the three of them, nodding politely at Director Piggot as she stepped through the door, slipping her hand out of her pocket for just long enough to shut it. “Mrs. Hebert, Mr. Hebert. I’m Enrica Penner, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Mom smiled her strained, discomforted smile. She wasn’t great with handling things outside of her control, Taylor remembered vaguely. “It’s good to meet you as well.”

Dad just nodded, remaining mostly silent.

Director Piggot cleared her throat, drawing everyone’s attention back to her. She wasn’t smiling, her face gave away startlingly little for someone whose very features seemed to be entirely dedicated to making her look as severely hawkish as humanly possible. “I believe we should begin with a discussion about what your options are,” she started, sending a glance in Enrica’s direction. To her credit, the woman stepped forward without missing a beat, laying the folder out in front of the three of them and opening the front cover to reveal a rather large assortment of papers, carefully flicking through the first three before coming to a stop.

“I will be upfront with the three of you: your daughter is not under arrest,” Director Piggot continued, gently tapping the pages that Enrica had laid out in front of them. As far as Taylor could make out in the piles of legalese, she wasn’t lying or even trying to obfuscate the truth. “But your daughter _is_ in trouble, to be clear.”

“In what way?” Mom asked, her tone forcefully even.

Director Piggot sighed, and it was a tired, _tired_ noise. “Your daughter was on two strikes for two separate incidents. She nearly dismembered someone with a sharp disc for her first, shortly after she began her career as a vigilante, and her second came when she was forced to remain to prevent one of her targets from bleeding out from the artery in his thigh being directly cut through by a spear.”

There was a short burst of silence as Taylor could all but _feel_ the weight of her parent’s stares.

“Not only that, but she was on thin ice to begin with. Your daughter has never taken part in a confrontation where she has not left someone pinned to something with a sharp object of some kind. Her violence was always extreme, but due to the nature of the Empire, we were giving her some breathing room in hopes that she would either eventually come to us or deescalate after a certain point.”

Mom’s hand tightened around her own, not in anger, but in worry. She could see it in the expression on her face, in the way her eyes flicked back and forth, not quite looking at anything in particular, just trying to figure out what she could even _do_. How she could fix something like this, even though Taylor knew that wasn’t really possible.

Director Piggot made another tired noise, reaching up to rub the bridge of her nose. “Your actions are your own responsibility, Shrike. You did these things, but your _actions_ were an eventuality.” The woman stared at them all, eyes harried, skin just a bit too pale. “The Empire’s method of exerting control is high-stress, high-conflict, an environment which makes trigger events more common. One of these days, someone was going to trigger because of their actions, and one of those people who triggered, well, they would start attacking the Empire as you had. It wasn’t something that _might_ happen, it was something that _was going to_ , we had plans in place for when it did.”

Taylor swallowed nervously, shifting in her seat. She glanced up, not quite able to meet Director Piggot’s harsh stare.

“It was why we could mobilize extra forces and had plans in place for dealing with things. Frankly, I think that everyone was just relieved it wasn’t someone who went for killing their targets, or who had a power that nobody in our employ could reasonably deal with if things became antagonistic.” Director Piggot paused, breathing out slowly. “Rarely, if ever, do powerful powers go to people who won’t use them to be as destructive as possible, things could be significantly worse. That’s not to say that you are going to be left off scot-free, of course, you have some options and the details might change, but currently, you are at a crossroads.” Glancing up at Enrica, Director Piggot inclined her head, the lawyer stepping forward again.

“As per rulings in 2005, the PRT has a system in place to handle cases like yourself which is upheld by the law,” Enrica explained carefully, gesturing down at the bottom of one page. “Any killing, regardless of its nature as self-defence or premeditated, will always give at least one strike to an independent hero or independent vigilante’s record. In your case, it was your last strike, there is nothing we can do to take it back, and so you have two general options. Your first is to leave, you are free to do so now that you are healed and responsive, but in doing so you accept your designation as a vigilante is null and you will be instead classified as a possible villain. No arrest warrant will be made in your name, you will not have heroes attacking you on the streets, but you will have no way to use or access PRT resources or help in the event you need it. The leniency the PRT has shown will also be waived, and maiming your targets will become grounds for an arrest.”

Taking in a breath, Enrica dragged her finger to the other page, circling a small section with her nail. “Your second is to accept a probationary Wardship, and in doing so be reclassified as a Ward. In doing this, you avoid the villainous designation and gain access to PRT resources, among other things.”

“I wouldn’t recommend just leaving,” Director Piggot said, voice purposefully flat.

She could _feel_ Dad bristle. “I believe she’s allowed to do so, even if it goes against your _judgement_ ,” he pointed out, tone clipped.

Director Piggot nodded easily. “She is, you could demand to leave right now and you’d be escorted out. But, I’ll be honest, you have a daughter you now know has powers, and just about every member of the Empire is currently going to try to kill her if she goes out without any protection. We can do nothing to interfere outside of encouraging her to avoid certain parts of the city, our hands are tied on her protection _unless_ she joins.” The woman shifted once again in her seat, shoulders rolling, working some of the tension out of her body. “Your daughter is in danger. I cannot promise she would be protected if she joined our branch of the Wards, but I can absolutely promise that we would do everything in our power to protect her in the event she became the target of those looking to take revenge for Hookwolf’s death.”

The words punctured Dad in some way, and he deflated, shoulders slumping. Mom reached over, letting go of her hand, and rubbed soft circles into his shoulder for a few moments before pulling her hands back into her lap, folding one over the other.

“I am willing to extend an offer. If your daughter joins now, goes through the processes, regardless of whether or not she’s relocated, which will come up later if you agree, I will reduce the total amount of time she’ll have to remain a Probationary Ward. We are aware her fight with Hookwolf was likely self-defence, we are more than aware that people do not handle trauma well, and whatever made your daughter trigger was enough to inflict violence like this on other people. We know circumstances aren’t as black and white as television tends to make it out to be.” Director Piggot explained, her voice returning to that careful blankness.

 _A bleeding core, people screaming, holding at limbs, limbs that reached out to her, that grasped and pulled and wrapped around her thr_ —

Mom’s hand clasped hers, startling her back to the present. She tried not to let it show, buried shaky fingers into the fabric of her costume, white-knuckled and squeezing tight enough to bruise, but from the look her mom gave her, she wasn’t doing a very good job at it.

“The Wards also have access to a comprehensive health plan and on-site therapists,” Director Piggot pointed out somewhat rudely, if not unkindly.

Mom and Dad shared another look.

“Taylor?” She murmured gently. “Are you okay with this?”

Swallowing thickly, Taylor tried, really did, to see what a future would look like on her own. Her mind pulled a blank, she felt just... _empty_ again, squeezed out, stretched too thin. She was tired, so, _so_ tired.

“Yeah,” she said and wasn’t quite sure if she was lying or not.

Mom nodded once, glanced one last time at Dad, before straightening her posture, retrieving her hand, and leaning forward. “Can you show us what our options are, in terms of her possibly joining the Wards?”

Enrica smiled at the three of them, a hopeful, quiet little smile. “Of course we can.”

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Sophia really fucking regretted coming in early. She’d been two hours early to the meeting itself, spending most of it avoiding the absolute shit out of Dean and his invasive looks, and then the meeting itself - filled to the brim with independents from downtown and the new arrivals from other branches - had taken another _two_ , if only because they needed to catch everyone up to speed on the change. Riots were predicted, the general atmosphere was dismal, and she still didn’t fucking know if she was going to go home tonight and end up talking Emma through the grief of losing Taylor to the prison system.

Slumping down into the couch, Sophia reached up to paw at her temples, the ache in her forehead a dull, persistent thrum.

“Advil?” Chris’s voice cut in, Sophia opening her eyes just a little to see the outstretched hand, a small package of red tablets staring back at her. She waved him off with her wrist, blinking a few times to let her eyes readjust to the bright lighting of the Wards area.

“I’m fine.” She was, too, she could handle a headache caused by frustration. They rarely lasted all that long, and she wasn’t really in a place to go rummaging around the small little kitchen area for a bottle of water to take the things. She’d choked and looked like an idiot the last time she tried to dry swallow a pill and she wasn’t really interested in doing it again, not after Dennis refused to ever forget about it.

There were only so many jokes about choking a single person could handle before they actually choked someone out, and speaking personally, Sophia didn’t want to be put on indefinite console duty because she attacked a teammate. Again.

Glancing around, Sophia took stock of the other Wards. Dennis had gone home almost immediately after the meeting, Dean was out of his set of power armour - including the helmet - and was currently wearing a domino mask while he presumably texted his girlfriend, Chris had been unearthed from the cluttered mess that was his workshop and showed no real inclination of heading back any time soon, spending his time fiddling with some chunk of tech he’d brought with him that vaguely resembled a Rubix cube, Missy was splayed out on the couch on the opposite side of the table to her, looking dead to the world, and Carlos was going over the actual _notes_ the weirdo wrote when at that emergency meeting, paging through them carefully but with a focus that meant you could probably set explosives off next to his head without getting his attention.

All-in-all, she was pretty sure everyone was just as tired as she was, and in no real place to make a scene. It’d been hours of listening to the reality of handling lynch riots and the possibility of new triggers and the _very real_ gang war that was escalating _as she fucking sat here_ in the city. The fact that they no longer had Hookwolf to act as one of their main damage sponges, someone who was close to impossible to reasonably take down without powers which in some way countered him, meant that the Empire lost a significant amount of its staying power on ABB turf, and was likely looking at internal schisming as people who joined mostly for Hookwolf were lashing out due to his death.

It was a huge fucking mess and was likely going to last at least a week, possibly up to three.

So, of course, finally settled and feeling the headache mercifully pull away from the center of her focus, the masks on alarm went off with a loud, shrill ring. Her headache reignited, half of the room collectively groaned as people scrambled to get masks on or at least to hide identifying features, herself included, though everything was done in a clumsy sort of gait. Two hours of intensive meetings would take the wind out of anyone’s sails, fuck whoever said sitting around couldn’t tire you out, _you_ listen to Armsmaster describe the possible destruction of _your_ city for two fucking hours and see how well you can walk for the rest of the day.

It really did say something that Missy didn’t even bother to get up at the possibility of a new arrival, a new Ward, something _interesting_. Instead, Sophia watched her paw around for her plastic visor, stick the thing to her face, and then promptly shove said face right back into the mess of pillows she’d stolen - _collected_ , in her words - from every other cushioned seat in the building, making a low noise of complaint.

Turning her head as the 60-second countdown - as displayed above said door on an LED panel - finally met zero, Sophia watched as Taylor stepped through the door, flanked by, of all people they could’ve chosen, Armsmaster. How on fucking earth did he manage to spend the last two hours making everyone miserable and still have the energy to bring Taylor in? Why not just delegate it? Why was he so preoccupied with being like this?

“Wards,” Armsmaster said, drawing everyone’s attention, not just her own. “This is our newest member. She is a probationary Ward, and has currently taken on the temporary codename of Dart, until further rebranding can be undertaken.”

Taylor really did look like shit, though. Sure, she had her mask on, but what she could see of her costume hidden beneath a comically oversized ‘Dockworkers Union’ jacket was in tatters, with big holes stretched wide to reveal pale, pale skin. Her hair was a mess, the black curls, bordering on ringlets, tangled and pulled back into a sloppy bun with more than a few strands hanging free from it, while her eyes, surrounded by the domino mask she wore, were lidded and bagged. Even her posture was slumped like she was barely able to keep on her feet.

Thinking about it, she had just fought and killed Hookwolf, so that could very well be the case.

“Remember, you are not obligated to, under the protocols...”

Sophia tuned out Armsmaster’s voice, knowing better than to find any substance in what he was saying when he started quoting verbatim from the handbook. She wondered sometimes if he had a handbook at home that he treated like a bible, displaying it on a table or in a fancy cabinet. It sure would explain his obsession with quoting it all the time, that and the stick up his ass.

Taylor just stared vacantly at Armsmaster, eyes going a bit glazed as she tried - and visibly failed - to pay attention to what he was saying.

“...and by extension, you are allowed to keep your identity secret to even other Wards.” Armsmaster finally finished, glancing around the room before, with the social grace she expected out of a career climber and the generally blunt person that he was, turning to Taylor. “Your parents will expect you in fifteen minutes. I will come to retrieve you in twelve. Introduce yourself.”

Then he left, because of course he did, the door shutting behind him with a silent click.

“Are you the Shrike?” Missy asked, voice muffled in her pillows.

Taylor twitched. “I was.”

“Huh.”

When nothing else was forthcoming, Carlos stepped forward, keeping himself in her line of vision, and carefully peeled his mask off. He smiled at her, and Taylor smiled back, though hers was significantly more strained. “I’m Carlos, but I also go by Aegis. It’s good to meet you, Dart.”

This time, the smile on Taylor’s face was a touch more genuine. Reaching up, she peeled off the domino mask, which at a closer observation did quite a bit more than Sophia had been giving it credit for. One of Taylor’s most distinctive features were her cheekbones, high and sharp, which made her eyes look more narrow and made her wider mouth more distinctive. With the mask on, that detail was lost, but with it off, it was almost hard to notice anything else. “I’m Taylor, but I uh, went by Shrike, and now I’m Dart. I guess.”

Chris approached as well, pulling his visor off. “I’m Kid Win, or Chris. It’s nice to meet another Tinker who isn’t Armsmaster.”

Missy pulled herself up from her pile of pillows, shucked her visor, and motioned vaguely at herself. “Missy. Vista.” There was a short pause, Taylor staring at her blankly, before Missy let her arms drop out from beneath her and fell back into the pile of cushions. “Tired.”

Next was Dean, who got up from his seat and walked the entire way around. He peeled the mask from his face, holding it in one hand as he smiled politely in her direction. “I’m Dean, I also go by Gallant in costume.”

“Stansfield?” Taylor murmured, sounding confused.

Dean twitched, smile a bit stiffer. “The very same.”

Taylor glanced away from him and towards her, an obvious dismissal. Dean slumped awkwardly, Carlos reaching out to gently console him with a pat on the shoulder. Missy didn’t seem to catch the byplay, probably because she might actually be asleep. The girl could literally sleep anywhere, and Sophia really wasn’t sure how to handle that.

But she was avoiding what she had to do, wasn’t she? Breathing in, Sophia rose to her feet unsteadily, reached up, and pulled the full mask off of her face. She smiled weakly as Taylor’s face morphed from confusion to total shock. “Hey, Taylor.”

The entire room froze.

“You don’t mean...” Missy asked, actually pushing herself fully up from her slump, glancing between the two of them. Dean stared on like a deer caught in headlights, staring at something none of them could see, while Chris just blinked a few times, shrugged, and then returned to his seat, going back to that chunk of tech he’d been fiddling with.

“I guess this means Thursday’s date is off,” Taylor blurted, which... yeah, okay, figures. Taylor under pressure apparently had no impulse control, Sophia could’ve seen that coming.

Carlos was still staring at her though, eyes not narrowed, but a bit worried. “Did you know?” He asked after a moment.

“I did,” Sophia said, just as easily.

Carlos shut his eyes, reaching up to rub at the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to have to disclose that you two are both dating _and_ that Sophia knew about it beforehand. You probably won’t get into much shit for it but I doubt Armsmaster is going to be impressed.”

“Is he ever?” Sophia shot back.

Carlos glared a little at her. “Sometimes.”

Rolling her eyes, Sophia turned her focus onto Taylor, who had gotten closer during her spat. They stared at one another for a moment, Sophia unsure where things would go, could even go.

“I promised to tell Emma about my identity,” Taylor said after a few moments, low enough that nobody could pick up on it. She had tangled her fingers together in front of her, an inherited sign of nervousness from her mother, if her memories of the time Annette visited her home was any indication.

Sophia breathed out through her nose. Emma didn’t know about her, but her telling Emma had been a _long_ time coming. She’d been preparing to do so later in the year, just a few more months before leaving herself vulnerable, but... well, time waited for nobody, she supposed. “I will too,” she said, just as quietly.

Taylor smiled a small, tired little thing. “I can invite both of you over since I don’t think school will be a thing for a while.”

Sophia nodded.

“I don’t think we can tell anyone here about the fact that our relationship is fake,” Taylor murmured after another few moments, voice so quiet even Sophia had to focus to hear it. “I don’t want to get you into more trouble. But, uhm, maybe Emma?”

...Wait, shit. She was right. Sophia was pretty sure, if only because they were ‘dating’, that she was probably getting off _really_ light. If it turned out that she had been lying to everyone about a girlfriend to give her an alibi about being a vigilante, she was probably actually going to end up on that damn console for the rest of her life. Shit.

She was going to have to keep the entire damn facade up, even more so now that fucking _Taylor_ was involved in her damn day job.

Taylor was staring at her with knowing, tired eyes, apparently picking up on her train of thought. Tiredly, Sophia reached out and, without preamble, coaxed her hand into Taylor’s. The girl in question froze for a few moments, fingers stiff and still, before relaxing, applying some pressure of her own, gentle squeezes, her eyes refocusing, coming back to the present. Something like warmth swelled in her chest, nervous and a bit twitchy, but Sophia pushed back on it, ignoring it for the time being.

She had better things to think about. “What did they give you for your cover?”

Taylor froze, something like sheepish embarrassment crawling over her face. For Wards, but _especially_ ones on probation, they had measures in place to ensure consistent absences were normalized. In her case, it was because she was on the track and field team and had everyone under the impression that she had a personal coach who was hoping to push her so that she could have a career. Apparently, Missy had enough skill in art to pass as someone with a teacher who took her under their wing, and Chris’ cover was that he was learning engineering in an apprenticeship, which was actually not too far from the truth.

Taylor mumbled something that Sophia couldn’t quite make out.

“Say that again?”

Taylor’s face flushed, more than a bit red. “Modelling,” she finally said, even the tips of her ears turning pink. “They have me doing modelling for clothes, with one extra thing they’ll decide on when I get my rebrand.”

Sophia choked. Taylor pinched the skin of her hand in retaliation.


	18. B-TRACK 2.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor and Sophia confess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, in the last chapter I completely forgot to include the discussion they had about Taylor avoiding a trial for the death of Hookwolf if she joined. Specifically, it was made clear that she likely would’ve gotten away with a self-defence claim (like 99% positive) regardless of whether or not she went to court, but going to a trial would’ve been somewhat public and lengthy. I’m including a reference to the conversation in this chapter, but know that you didn’t miss anything and that I didn’t intend for it to be obfuscated like this. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry about the confusion.

For all that she avoided being grounded, Mom and Dad had been less than okay with what she had been doing. Part of it, she imagined, was that she never told them, never disclosed her problems or sought them out for help, and the other part of it was likely more simple: the sheer fact that she had put herself in danger and gotten wounded had been enough to make them upset, angry not at her specifically, but more at her decisions and choices.

The conversation after she had gotten home - still digesting the fact that Sophia was _Shadow Stalker_ and now a lot of things made a whole lot more sense - had been long and stressful. Nobody had raised their voices, but that didn’t mean anyone had been particularly calm during the discussion. She had told them everything, not just the abstract, Brent’s family, the compound, the choking incident, the inability to leave the relationship, the dawning horror as she realized that she would never be safe, that her world had started to revolve around a man she was certain would one day kill her.

She told them about her powers, about designing weapons and about why she did it, how she got away with it. She told them about the rush she felt hurting others, making them squirm, inflicting violence on someone who as a result couldn’t retaliate against her, the sense of power, and the eventual crash when Hookwolf pushed into her space.

She spared them nothing, and it had been... intense.

The dust had settled, though. Taylor was honestly convinced it was her candidness about the entire thing that had spared her getting grounded, that either the shock from hearing just what she had been hiding from them had taken them off guard enough that the topic of punishment wasn’t on the mind at the time, or that they had - maybe somewhat correctly - assumed punishing her by keeping her locked away in her room with no access to friends or outlets might prove exceptionally counterproductive for her mental health.

Either way, she still hadn’t gotten off scot-free, but things had calmed down, become more stable, in that aftermath. Dinner had been awkward, yes, but Mom and Dad had found their footing in the new dynamic her honesty had provided and for all that she had crept around the house like she was walking on eggshells during her morning routine, things were, hours later, finally starting to feel normal, no longer so tense or ready to fall apart. It was a weight off of her shoulders that the truth was out, one she hadn’t known she was carrying until she wasn’t anymore. She felt less guilt staring into her mother’s face now, though the expressions that had crawled over Mom’s face during breakfast probably meant the same couldn’t be said for her.

Dragging her eyes away from the ceiling of her bedroom, Taylor yawned, pushing herself up into a sitting position and squinting at the clock at the far other end of the room. Fifteen minutes until Sophia and Emma were supposed to arrive, she could all but feel the noose of nervousness tighten around her throat. She had hidden something else from Emma, and here she was, coming clean _again_ about a secret she shouldn’t’ve kept. She had just been so... nervous, back then, paranoid, and that wasn’t an excuse or a justification, she should’ve known better, but it had just been _easier_ to keep it to herself, to keep what she was doing close to her chest.

Breathing out a sigh, Taylor shifted her body around, letting her legs dangle over the edge of her bed, toes coming to rest on the cold hardwood floor. She shivered, gradually coaxing herself into a full stand, ignoring the nippy bite beneath her heels, before finally staggering her way over to her wardrobe, crouching down to yank the sticky bottom drawer out and retrieve some pyjama pants and socks.

Once she had slipped into those with only a small amount of struggle - her legs were still stiff, aching from overuse - she plodded her way to her door, pulling it open after flicking the doorknob lock. Walking down the length of the hallway, she peeked into her parent’s room, finding nobody, before making the turn and starting down the stairs, picking up the distant murmur of the television as she did.

She spotted her mother first, sitting in her chair, a hardcover PRT-issued book opened across her lap, one hand keeping it tilted while the other quietly paged through it. The table beside her was stacked with smaller books, things she’d both been given and picked up at the recommendation of her handler, Ella Grant - or just Ms. Grant, as she preferred to be called - not that Taylor had really been listening in on what she did or didn’t get.

Her dad was less visible, though she could comfortably say he wasn’t hard to find. He was in the kitchen, not a surprising place to find him considering he picked up cooking at about the same time he did paprika, and boy was it hard to hear anything else but the bang and clatter of activity. She didn’t know _what_ he was making, but from the way things were sounding over there alongside the intermittent sound of the hand blender going off, she wasn’t really sure she _wanted_ to know, either.

Making it to the bottom of the stairs, Taylor passed through the opening in the hallway, stepping into the living room. It had changed over the last few years, becoming the home for an assortment of bookcases, some attached to the walls and others free-standing. They had become necessary after Mom had agreed to take in a small library’s worth of literature and philosophy books when one of her coworkers was moving away without the ability to take all of her collection. Taylor could still remember the look of tired horror on her mother’s face when the van had arrived with five or six times as many boxes full of books than they had been led to believe would come, not to mention the following scramble to put up places to store said books throughout their home, leaving the entire house nestled with random bookcases full of miscellanea, though most of them had come to clutter the walls of the living room.

“Your father’s making lunch,” Mom said without looking up from her book, turning the page.

There was a sharp clatter from the kitchen, accompanied by the rev of the hand blender. Taylor stared warily towards that end of the house, but didn’t comment.

“No, I don’t know what he’s making either,” Mom confirmed, eyes flicking up, a little smile playing over her lips. “But it’s kept him occupied for the last few hours. He started right after we had breakfast.”

That was generally how Dad handled things, so the timeline fit. He worked through things by working _on_ things with his hands, not quite distracting himself, but using some other task or physical activity as a way to better process his problems. The fact that he had been in there for a few hours didn’t mean anything good, but she had dug her own grave, to whatever ends that might be.

Plucking one bookmark from the pile beside her, Mom slipped it between the pages she was on and finally shut the book in its entirety, folding her hands over the cover. “Emma and Sophia should be over at any time now, right?” She asked, glancing up at the clock, her lips pursed.

Taylor followed her gaze, nodding. “Less than ten minutes, yeah.”

“Do you want me to just send them up to your room or do you think you’ll wait out here?” Mom began stacking her books together, fingers slipping beneath the bottom of her pile to, with a soft grunt, lift them up and brace the entire thing against her chest as she steadily rose to her feet.

Well, she had nothing better to do. “I’ll wait.”

Mom made her way over to the box the books had come in, crouching down to gently pile them inside the cardboard interior. After she was done, she folded the flaps back over and hefted the box itself, maneuvering it around so that she could seamlessly slot it beneath the body of one of the IKEA bookcases they had gotten, making it just look like a plain cardboard box being used for extra storage. Drawing herself up to her full height, Mom reached down and patted her knees down, swatting the dust from her jeans.

“I’m going to make sure your dad isn’t burning the house down,” Mom said after another moment, glancing back at her. “Also to make sure what he’s making is actually edible. Be on your best behaviour, alright hon?”

Taylor smiled, though she could feel just how tired it looked. “Yeah, Mom.”

Mom’s smile wavered a little before she stepped back, arms outstretched in a silent offer. Taylor padded forward, letting herself get wrapped in her mother’s arms, nose pushed into her thickly-knit sweater, the steady warmth and rhythmic beat of her heart soothing and pleasant. She felt the muscles in her back relax, her jaw unclench, she felt herself go even a little limp in the embrace, fingers tangling in the hem of her mother’s clothes, before she finally pulled away.

“We’ll work through this together, okay?” Mom whispered gently, hand reaching out to gently rub against her shoulder. “Your father and I will always be here for you, you can tell us _anything_ , and we’ll do everything in our power to make sure you’re happy and hale.”

There was another loud clatter, accompanied by a low murmur of cussing, from the kitchen. Mom’s smile turned a bit sharp, almost mischievous, as they fully pulled away, Taylor watching as she turned on her heel and strode into the kitchen, vanishing behind the dividing wall just to the right of the threshold.

Clawing her hand through her hair, Taylor let herself slump a little, glancing up at the clock. Just a little while longer and she’d have to come clean, she’d have to deal with the fallout of being a shit friend, and she’d have to establish that her and Sophia’s relationship was fake to one of the people who really cared about it being _real_. Great, she was fine, she could handle this, she wasn’t about to freak out before people even arrived at her house because she couldn’t handle stress.

Pushing down on the itch to do something with her hands - the urge to tinker had started to gradually get worse over the last 24 hours - Taylor walked her way over to the couch, stealing the remote from the table beside it and plopping herself down into the somewhat lumpy cushions. Aiming the remote, she brought up the guide, going down her possible options for what to watch, dutifully ignoring the news channels before finally coming to a halt on The Discovery Channel, switching over to what looked like a nature documentary about the native sockeye salmon population and their migratory habits. Cranking the volume up when another clatter interrupted the narrator, Taylor eventually let the remote drop to her side, pressing her head further into the cushions on the couch, letting her legs dangle out in front of her.

Tilting her head back, Taylor shut her eyes and let the dulcet tones of David Attenborough occupy her mind for the immediate future.

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Sophia’s first impression of Taylor’s house was... mediocre. It was a pretty generic type of house for the area, two floors, blocky shape, a tilted tiled roof, with the shingling on the outside looking to have been recently redone. At some point, someone had torn out what had likely been wooden steps up to the door and replaced it with a white wooden patio, though a closer glance made it clear that they hadn’t done it very well. The concrete foundation was still barely visible from where dead, frost-withered grass cuffed around the edges of the building, and it was somewhat odd for how few front-facing windows it had.

Standing at the top of the driveway, Sophia glanced back around to the sidewalk, where Emma was still talking with her father through an open window, his car parked not in the driveway, but on the street, if only because the Heberts' two cars took up the majority of the space. She had carpooled with Emma for the drive over, as Terry and her mom were busy, and though she could’ve taken the bus, she didn’t really _want_ to. This part of Brockton was still in the throes of gang conflict and for all that busses were a sort of implicit neutral territory, she still didn’t want to risk getting caught in the crossfire or ending up with someone tailing her because of her skin colour.

Fucking Nazis, seriously. Making everything just a little more difficult for anyone who wasn’t the colour of bleached wood pulp.

Curling herself further into her jacket, Sophia watched as Emma pulled away from the window, waved at her father, then started the march up Taylor’s frankly absurdly angled driveway. It wasn’t the worst she’d seen, that went to her neighbour whose driveway was the sort of worryingly horizontal angle that meant every time they drove onto it they scraped the shit out of the bottom of their car, but it was pretty close.

“Sorry about that,” Emma said once she’d finally climbed her skinny ass up to the top, hands on her knees as she wheezed. “Had to make sure he wasn’t going to try to call in every fifteen minutes to make sure Taylor’s house didn’t spontaneously explode.”

Sophia cocked an eyebrow. “Is he really that bad?”

“My dad works with _Carol Dallon_ , Soph, I’m pretty sure he’s adopted her paranoia through osmosis. It’s insane.” Emma didn’t sound terribly impressed about the fact either. Not that Sophia could personally blame her, from what few interactions she’d had with Brandish, the woman either operated as ‘paranoid asshole who trusts nobody’ or ‘stoic professional woman above petty emotions’ with very little in between.

It was a wonder how New Wave functioned at all, all things considered.

Emma paced ahead and Sophia trudged after her, scanning the area around her. Taylor’s house was at the far end of the street, her closest neighbour was across the road from her, with the next closest after that being separated from the left side of the house by a rusted-out playground. It was, purposefully or not, a relatively isolated place to live, especially with just how off the main road the little community the house belonged to was, though for all that she could complain about it, Sophia was pretty sure Taylor could’ve gone to Arcadia if she applied for it, as it sure as shit was closer than her house ever was.

No, she totally wasn’t bitter about being like, two-hundred and twenty-five feet off from being in the Arcadia school district. Fuck you and whoever said she was.

Stopping just shy of the door, Emma ignored the doorbell and instead opted to knock wildly for a few seconds.

There was a _thud_ somewhere from inside the house, then footsteps. Sophia walked up the few stairs onto the patio and approached the door herself, hands still tucked into her pockets, coming to a halt behind Emma just as the front door unlocked with a loud _clack_ and pulled itself inward, opening into the interior of the house. Taylor, wearing a sleeveless t-shirt, some red-and-white-striped pyjama pants, and a pair of socks with cherry-red candy-canes patterned over them, stared at the two of them for a few seconds before stepping to the side and motioning them in.

Following after Emma, Sophia glanced around the interior. It was definitely lived in, but not exactly in an entirely _good_ way. The place was cramped, bookshelves hanging from the walls or being pressed up against them, the living room looking more like an alcove in a library, with every shelf filled to bursting with books. There were even some extra boxes lying around or beneath bookcases, likely where books they had no place for went.

Catching her eye, Emma snorted out a laugh. “Excessive, isn’t it?”

“A little,” Sophia agreed, reaching up to pull at her scarf with one hand as she pushed the door shut behind her with the other. Taylor was standing near the stairs not a huge distance away, just staring at them quietly, looking generally withdrawn and, at a closer glance now that her eyes adjusted from the sun outside to the slight gloom of indoors, more tired than she had when they’d seen one another at the PRT building yesterday.

Tucking her scarf around the hat rack and shucking her boots to sit next to the rest of the shoes piled near the door, Sophia began unzipping her jacket, pulling it free from her shoulders and relishing the feeling of air against her bare arms. She hated the jacket she’d ended up wearing for the drive over, but considering that she had been in a rush and had picked one at random, she could only really blame herself and her shit timekeeping habits for the twenty minutes she’d ended up wearing that abomination of cotton and crinkly polyester.

She had all of about half a second of freedom, her coat and scarf hung up, her boots off, her arms bare, before Emma grabbed hold of her wrist and tugged her impatiently towards the stairs. Letting herself get dragged, Sophia found Taylor at the top of the stairs, still waiting patiently for them, her shoulder resting against one of those bookcases, hands tense at her side, fingers scratching around her hips, like she was trying to find the opening to a pocket.

Each step on the stairs came with a creak, old wood shifting as they tromped their way up to the second floor. Sophia paid some attention to her surroundings on the way up, noticing the long line of photos that framed the wall leading up to the second floor, pictures of Taylor when she was younger, others of Mr. and Mrs. Hebert, some including older people she had no name for, likely relatives or grandparents of some kind.

The route to Taylor’s room led them around a bend in the second-floor hallway, passing by a master bedroom - presumably where her parents slept, the door not open enough to see that far into it - what looked like a walk-in closet, and a bathroom until finally coming to a halt at a closed door. Taylor reached out, twisting the knob and pushing the door open, Emma finally relinquishing her wrist as the three of them made their way into the cramped interior of the bedroom.

Much like the rest of the house, it was both exactly what she expected and the exact opposite. It was utilitarian to a degree, with a bed, a wardrobe, a closet, a desk with a decent-looking computer on it, and a small assortment of old posters strung up on the walls. Quite a few were of Armsmaster in some of his older sets of power armour, back when they pushed for him to wear classically heroic colours like gold and white, with a handful of others being capes that Sophia had memories of, if just not detailed ones, like Challenger, Rant and Rave, and Breakline, all of whom had long since transferred out of the shithole that was Brockton.

Dropping down onto her bed, Taylor audibly exhaled. “Sorry,” she said, voice a bit rough. “Sophia, can you close and lock the door?”

Emma glanced between the two of them, her eyes lingering on her when she did as Taylor asked without complaint, twisting the doorknob lock and jostling it to make sure it wouldn’t turn.

Taking in a breath, Emma rested her back against Taylor’s wardrobe, eyes directed to the girl in question. “Is there something I should know? You’re being awfully secr—”

“I’m Shrike,” Taylor blurted, not letting her finish.

Emma froze, mouth mid-way through a word. For a few moments, nothing really happened except for Taylor curling increasingly into herself, looking worse and worse about her decision, Emma staring off into the middle distance with a dumbfounded look on her face.

Then, she blinked slowly. Once, twice, Emma breathed in, out, and then kinda crumpled against the wardrobe, reaching up to comb fingers through her hair. “I should’ve noticed,” she croaked out, sounding demolished.

Taylor jolted to her feet, hands outstretched. “I hid it from you. You not knowing was intentional.”

“You hid a _lot_ ,” Emma bit out harshly, her face crumpling as she processed what she just said. “Shit, that wasn’t fair of me. Fuck. Just, shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like that, it just took me off guard. I should’ve noticed the damn signs, Taylor, in _both_ of these cases, your sudden athleticism, the nights you just weren’t there to respond to my texts, I could’ve— _should’ve_ put the clues together.”

Sophia shifted onto her back heel, breathing in slowly, then out. “If it’s any consolation,” she began, startling the other two occupants of the room, who quickly glanced her way, having apparently forgotten about her. “I only found out because one of her spears fell out of her bra and landed on the ground in front of me.”

“It was really awkward,” Taylor added, sounding a bit more level, but no less nervous. “I was worried she thought I’d be a school shooter, since, y’know.”

Emma choked, a shrill, borderline hysterical giggle pushing its way out of her chest. Her knees wobbled, and Sophia was there to stop her from falling before she really knew what she was doing, Taylor doing the same for Emma’s other arm. Carefully, they hauled her up, the girl still giggling, looking like she wasn’t quite able to process what was going on, and let her flop down on the bed. She laughed a bit more, the sound transitioning from overwhelmed hysterics to genuinely amused chortling, before finally it petered off, Emma taking in deep gulps of air as she visibly tried to regain her equilibrium.

Wet - if not sad - eyes stared at Sophia up from the fringe of Emma’s bangs, copper locks partially covering lidded green-gray irises. “Anything you wanna tell me too?”

Sophia shifted awkwardly, caught a bit out of pace with Emma’s statement. Her hesitation made Emma freeze, stiffen for a few seconds, before relaxing with an awkward, pitched groan, her head swerving to glance up at the ceiling.

“C’mon, out with it Sophia, it’s apparently sharing day and if I don’t get it out of you now I never will.”

Meeting Taylor’s eyes across from Emma’s partially-limp form, Sophia swallowed down her nervousness. “I’m Shadow Stalker.”

Emma let out a “huh”, not quite freezing as she had with Taylor, but nevertheless stopping for a moment to clearly work the idea over in her head. After a few seconds of awkward silence, she flopped over in one direction so that she could look more directly into her eyes. “That clears up a lot of things I was wondering about.”

“Was it really that obvious?” Sophia asked over the nervousness in her throat. If it was, she was definitely going to have to retake those classes about hiding and separating your cape identity to your civilian one because if _Emma_ was getting suspicious that meant she was being far, far too clumsy.

“Nah,” Emma was quick to reply, pushing herself up so that she was sitting. She patted the spaces to her left and right, and wordlessly, both she and Taylor sat down on either side of Emma. “Just some inconsistencies, I thought you were doing things that you just didn’t want to do with me, or needed time to yourself. I didn’t take it personally.”

Sophia felt herself relax a little at that, breathing out through her nose.

Emma smiled at her, one of those gentle, personal smiles she so rarely handed out. “I get why you two started dating now, shared experiences and all that.”

...Right, shit. They were going to fess up about—

“We aren’t actually dating. It was a ruse to get my parent’s attention off my back,” Taylor blurted, again, because seriously how the fuck did she manage to hide her secret identity to begin with if she started babbling whenever she was under pressure?

Emma blinked slowly, glancing between the two of them with a purposefully blank expression. “I’m pretty sure,” she began gently, reaching out to take both her and Taylor’s hands into her own. “That even if it was fake, it became something more for the two of you. I’m not blind, you know.”

Sophia shut her eyes for a moment, focused on the warmth of tangled fingers. Emma wasn’t... really _wrong_ , necessarily. She might even be right, it was just taking a lot to accept that. She’d been putting a lot of work into pretending she didn’t see the way Taylor had started to look at her, had started to hang off both her words and her body, how she’d felt when she had to sew Taylor back together, the worry and fear choking her, smothering her.

She breathed out deeply, her chest fluttering. Nobody said anything for a time, even after Sophia opened her eyes again, Taylor staring at her own hand, tangled with Emma’s, while Emma herself occasionally flicked her gaze between the two of them before focusing on her feet, toes wiggling visibly beneath her socks.

“We’ll still include you in everything we can,” Sophia finally managed to say, burying the nervousness beneath the need to clarify, to explain. “Just because we’re both capes doesn’t mean you’re less important.”

Emma smiled and it was a little brittle.

“Emma,” Taylor said quietly, her voice still rough, still tight. “I promise you that we’ll do everything we can to keep you in the loop. I, uhm, was forced to join the Wards, after, uhm, I killed someone.”

The warmth in the room tanked at the words, reality settling in, Emma looking at Taylor, a pained look in her face, not pity, but something close to sadness or even worry.

“I didn’t just join because I could dodge a trial,” Taylor quickly added, sounding almost like she was trying to justify something she hadn’t come to terms with yet. “I wouldn’t’ve been convicted with anything, even Director Piggot was pretty sure it was a clear case of self-defence that had escalated. Nobody would’ve really worked very hard to drag me under for killing a Birdcage-bound Nazi in self-defence. It was for more than that... I. Uhm. Didn’t really see a future for myself after this point, you know? If I go out as Shrike, everyone will be gunning for my literal head, and the PRT is really the only place where I could probably find a path forward that won’t end with me in an abandoned field with two bullets in my head.”

The words hung in the air, thick and tense. Sophia couldn’t even bring herself to call it fatalistic, unfortunately. For all that the Empire liked to play at being virtuous, Shrike had killed one of their strongest capes, arguably the strongest if you didn’t count Purity, Night or Fog. Hookwolf had acted as a strong deterrent for anyone who wasn’t _Lung_ , it had kept the ABB’s general rank and file from moving in on certain parts of Brockton, and he had been a draw for people who liked to pretend they weren’t racist but still wanted to hurt minorities. Hookwolf was a monster, he ran dogfighting rings and buried his racism behind some sort of bullshit clannish warrior culture that had never truly existed, but he was a _very strong_ monster, if only because he was next to impossible to completely take down by conventional means.

Taking him out was bigger than taking out someone like Rune or Alabaster. It would be _bad_ , yes, but... Hookwolf was a lieutenant to the gang, functionally the second in command, one of their strongest, and he was dead at the hands of a teenage girl. That couldn’t just be _allowed_ , not with how the Empire promoted itself. Hell, even in the Wards, Sophia wasn’t entirely sure she would go untargeted by those who were looking to martyr Hookwolf for the cause.

“You’ll look after her, right?” Emma asked, pulling her attention back to the present.

Sophia met her eyes, squirmed a little beneath the intensity of it. “Yeah.”

Emma breathed out, a loud, dramatized noise. She flopped back, refusing to release their hands, limbs tangling together as all three of them were hauled down onto Taylor’s cramped bed, one meant really only for one person, maybe one and a half if you pushed it. She giggled again, this time with no small amount of warmth in her tone, before echoing out a loose, comfortable sigh.

“I forgive you,” Emma said gently, though to whom it wasn’t really clear. “I shouldn’t need to say that, since I don’t think there is anything you’ve just explained that _needs_ forgiveness, but... I forgive you. Okay?”

There was a short moment of silence, quiet and peaceful.

“Okay,” someone whispered.


	19. B-TRACK 2.4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor gets a new name, Sophia has lunch.

Nicotine addictions sucked. That wasn’t really a controversial statement or anything, in fact Taylor would consider it to be pretty common wisdom—addictions to habit-forming substances were bad, what a shocker. Sure, each drag on the cigarette was another uptick in the chance she’d end up with lung cancer in her immediate future, but she was pretty sure she’d earned this smoke break after being cut off from them for half a week at this point. Getting out of the house to smoke had been next to impossible unless she wanted to come clean about it, and frankly, the last thing she needed was to end up at Choices to go along with her probationary Wardship.

Taking another pull off of the cigarette between her teeth, Taylor studiously ignored the occasional glance she was getting as people passed her by on the sidewalk by the stairs she was using as a seat. Behind her, towering over the commercial district like a tall, unavoidable middle finger, was the PRT HQ itself, swarming with PRT officers like ants in a colony. While the riots about Hookwolf’s death had calmed down over the last day, maybe day-and-a-half, there was still a huge swathe of gang conflicts going on in the background, something that didn’t lend itself to low-activity.

Pulling her hand out of her pocket, Taylor glanced down at the phone in her palm, pressing her finger into the touch screen until it flickered out of sleep mode. 8:03AM stared back up at her, about ten or so minutes before her meeting was to occur. She had enough time to finish her cancer stick and trudge her way up the elevator to meet with the person who would be dictating her future appearance and name as a hero, one she had a surprising amount of say in, but still significantly less than she might’ve if she had just joined the Wards to begin with.

Relaxing into the calming thrum of nicotine in her veins, Taylor shuffled her hand back into her jacket pocket and hunched her shoulders, trying to curl away from the cold. Being the middle of January, it was bitingly cold most of the time, and today really wasn’t any different. A high of maybe thirty degrees Fahrenheit, though it felt more like a balmy fourteen if only because the wind kept scraping over her skin like tiny knives made out of ice. The sky was predictably overcast - such was the curse of living on the Atlantic - and due to its proximity to the waterfront, there was a lovely layer of _freezing fog_ which did absolutely nothing to help the feeling that the air was actively trying to attack her.

Sucking on the butt end of her cigarette, Taylor dropped it from between chapped fingers, letting it hit the concrete sidewalk below her. Swatting her hands across her jeans, she rose into a mostly steady stand and ground the heel of her boot against the butt, snuffing the dull, ashy embers of her shitty decisions out. Stretching her arms above her head, Taylor sunk a bit further into the embrace of her scarf, letting it bunch up around her nose and cheekbones, a yawn creaking her jaw open wide as she turned and started her ascent up the concrete stairs.

Truth be told, she was kinda looking forward to meeting the PR manager of Brockton. Not, of course, that she liked having her decisions taken away from her, but there was something childishly appealing about going up to be outfitted as a hero. She’d never seen her time out as Shrike as anything like that—not with the baggage the entire thing had come with, and for the most part she had never really focused on looking _good_ , just having functional equipment and weapons.

Murmuring a polite “thank you” as an older man held one of the glass doors open for her as she approached, Taylor let out a huff of relief as she passed out of the cold, icy winds of the outside and into the warm, comfortable embrace of the PRT HQ. Almost immediately, as expected, her glasses fogged, though not bad enough that she thought she’d have to take them off or wait until they defrosted before moving, but the world became just a bit more blurry, a bit harder to make things out.

The main floor of the PRT building was more of a lobby, an entry-way that didn’t quite fit the otherwise utilitarian nature of the space. It was wide, with huge pillars throughout, with a single main desk dead center in the space, in which a secretary sat. The area was mostly filled with officers at the moment, some in various states of dress in terms of equipment, helmets left on tables as they sipped at coffee, though not everyone seemed to be taking part in the break. The majority of the area was taken up with comfortable, if modern-looking benches, but tucked away in little corners and in walls were a few coffee shops and one gift shop, though the latter had a ‘closed’ sign thrown over its door with no indication if it would ever be open again, the interior, just barely visible through the huge glass window and door, too dim to make anything substantial out.

Pushing away at the distracting aroma of coffee - she already had two cups, any more and they’d be peeling her off the walls - Taylor trudged her way through the shifting throng of officers and basic staff personnel, coming to a stop on the other side of the secretary’s desk. The woman in question - mid-to-late fifties with a shock of white hair, crows feet, and skin the colour of mocha - raised a single finger, one half of her body hunched up to hold a curly-cord phone between her ear and her shoulder.

“Yes, okay. We have an opening available at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon.” The secretary typed something on the keyboard, a quick flurry of fingers clacking on mechanical keys. “That’s good! Okay, right. We’ll see you tomorrow then. Yes. Just come to the main desk, we’ll get you situated.”

There was another short pause, before finally the woman said a quick “goodbye, have a nice day” and hung the phone up. Taylor wilted a bit as the woman turned her full attention to her, dark, dark black eyes all but piercing through her, but after a few short moments of silent inspection the woman’s face and eyes melted into a warmer, calmer sort of expression, one that was somewhere between the placid smiles commercial workers wear and something more genuine. “What can I do for you today, dear?”

Reaching into her pants pocket, Taylor pulled out the laminated lanyard they’d handed her after she joined. It didn’t have her face on it, it didn’t even really count as a keycard in the truest sense of the word, and it was likely far more complicated than she knew, but for the most part it just functioned as a way to indicate she was here for reasons beyond getting a tour or loitering. Handing it over, she watched as the older woman swiped it through the reader, typing a few keys, before handing it back.

“They’ll be waiting for you on floor twenty-six, room twelve,” the woman explained easily, shooting her another half-genuine, half-not smile.

Taylor tucked the lanyard, cord and all, back into the cramped interior of her jeans. “Thanks.”

“Have a good day!” The secretary called out, the words all but chasing her heels as she made the short walk between the desk to the nearest elevators. Reaching out, she jammed her thumb into the button, making the glassy surface light up, a dull chime echoing out from the two elevators in front of her as the one to the left gradually pulled the doors open, revealing that same sort of too-large elevator that still, for reasons beyond what she really knew, set her teeth on edge.

Stepping into it, Taylor pressed the button for floor twenty-six, the elevator chiming for a second time as the doors slowly slid shut, a small bulb recessed into the roof of the elevator blinking on just before the doors could fully close, illuminating the reflective metal interior. There was, again, no indication that the elevator started moving, no rumble or shake or lurch in her gut, and instead, all she had to work off was the LED panel above the door, the displayed numbers inching ever-higher.

The silence itself was almost its own noise, a low high-pitched whine in her ears as her hearing grew ever-more-sensitive, trying to pick up on anything, any rumble or sound of churning gears, but coming up empty. Whatever Tinkertech - and it had to be, otherwise these sorts of things would be in every building from Brockton to Vancouver - controlled the elevator had been clearly made with silence and ease of use in mind, because genuinely, if not for the fact that the screen above her told her otherwise, Taylor would’ve long assumed the elevator had stalled or had just not bothered to start moving in the first place.

Finally, though, the elevator did reach floor twenty-six and the doors peeled apart with an identical smooth slowness, a low, pleasant chime echoing into the interior to indicate their arrival, alongside the recessed light blinking back off, leaving the elevator gloomy and not exactly the most appealing place to be. Stepping out of it with maybe a bit too much hurry in her legs, Taylor was met with a similar sort of long hallway she had seen near Director Piggot’s office, made up of a series of glass doors with bronze numbers adhered to them, starting with 6 for reasons she would never fully understand.

Treading along the hallway, towards where 6 became 7, then 8, she vaguely got the impression that the hallway itself was an outer square that encircled the rooms themselves, with two elevators to each wall. Turning around the first corner - 11, then 12 just in sight - her hypothesis was at least proven marginally correct, as while she hadn’t checked the other two walls, this one at least had an identical set up of two elevators separated by a potted plant leading into a cramped hallway with numbered doors. It would make sense, to a degree, the PRT building in Brockton had been the result of funding and a construction boom before she had been born, it had been built from the ground up - if made to imitate the general skyline of the city - unlike most other headquarters in other parts of America, which primarily retrofitted old buildings or shared them with some wing of the judicial branch, police, courts, that sort of thing.

Coming to a stop at the door marked 12, Taylor reached out, grasped the knob with her hand, and pushed the opaque glass door open, stepping into what could only really be called a studio. There was no waiting area, just a massive, two-floor space - a visible loft extending over about half of the room, with a metal staircase leading up to it - cluttered with mannequins displaying various costumes, some familiar - Vista’s was immediately recognizable out of the corner of her eye - and some significantly less so. There were metal tables strewn about, accompanied by fold-out chairs, with the surfaces covered in papers and books, among other things. The walls were lined with an endless array of posters, some she owned herself, and at the far end of the room, surrounded by cabinets full of supplies, was a single metal desk with a computer on it, a man in his mid-thirties sitting behind it, and with another fold-out chair in front of it.

He glanced up, apparently hearing her arrival, and smiled at her. “Over here!” He called out, raising one arm to wave at her.

Making her way through the maze of tables covered in merchandise, prototype costumes and design plans wasn’t difficult, but she did have to retrace her steps or shove chairs to the side a few times to fully make it through. The sheepish smile, a bit guilty if not willing to do anything to assuage said guilt, spoke to the fact that the complicated network of tables and chairs was probably a normal state of affairs, probably something people had just gotten used to navigating, if she had to make a guess.

“Sorry about that,” the man said once she was in talking range, one hand coming up to nervous scratch at the curls of ginger hair that defined his beard, the short tangle of hairs blended well with the relatively close-shaven head he had. “I was going to clean up, but, uh, I’ve only been here for half an hour.”

Taylor said nothing, pulling the chair back and dropping herself down into it, unzipping her jacket now that the warmth of the building was starting to get to the layers she’d been forced to wear by her parents.

“I’m Oleander Denzel, head of the Protectorate E-N-E - that’s Brockton, for the record - PR department. I handle general costume design and branding goals for most capes. My team won’t be here in time for our meeting, but there are about fifteen other people who work with me, most of them have their own offices in the loft above.” Oleander - apparently - explained, smiling at her with very, very green eyes. “You are Shrike, right?”

Taylor blinked slowly, giving up on getting a read on the guy. He was both awkward and in a position of authority, sheepish and clearly motivated. People were complicated, it was too early to even _begin_ with unpacking any of that. “Dart now, but, yes.”

“Not for long you won’t be,” Oleander pointed out easily, drumming his fingers across the wood of his desk.

Taylor felt some part of her bristle unreasonably. “What if I wanted to _keep_ Dart?”

Oleander just smiled, a conciliatory slant to his lips that felt borderline condescending. “Well, we’d have to get into a discussion with the current Dart, a Ward from Vancouver. She can generate wings on things and control them, and last I checked she’s graduating from the Wards in about... six months, and I think the current plan is to give her Peregrine when she joins the Protectorate in full. If you’re willing to wait six months to hold onto Dart, we can do your reveal then?”

Taylor felt her face flush, embarrassed heat crawling over her cheekbones, her nose, prickling her ears. “No,” she got out, trying to keep the fluster out of her tone. “That’s fine.”

“Wonderful,” Oleander said, his smile reaching his eyes again. “So, with rebranding you, we do have a few options available for you to choose, but I think it comes down to the goals we thought up when your case came into our hands.”

Taylor said nothing, and apparently taking her silence as assent to continue, he did.

“You’re a difficult case, as a lot of probationary Tinkers are. There were a lot of ways we could go with things, but what we wanted to do was initially separate you from the past image of Shrike, who used primarily darts or spears and knives to pin her enemies to walls. The main way to _do_ that was to brand you in a specific way, and after some general discussion, the decided route we ended up going on was sports-themed.”

She felt her face cramp at those words, Oleander raising his hand in a silent motion to remain quiet. She had to bite her lip to keep her protests from her mouth - a _sports_ hero, seriously? Why? - but she did manage, which was at least something.

Reaching out, Oleander turned the monitor around so that she could see the screen. On it, three images were displayed: one was a broad-shouldered white man in full football gear with the top half of the wire mesh of his helmet framing a tinted-glass visor, beneath which ‘Linebacker’ was written in all capitals. The next was a tall, lanky Latino guy, maybe a year older than her, with a domino mask to cover his features and a head-sized sphere of water floating above one outstretched hand, ‘Dribble’ written beneath his picture in a similar font to the last, though this time not in all capitals, with instead the D being far larger than the rest of the letters. The last image was of a short, olive-skinned lady woman wearing slacks, a dress shirt, a pageboy hat that extended into a domino mask, with a golf club hefted over one shoulder, ‘9-Iron’ displayed below her picture, the 9 designed in such a way that it resembled a golf club.

“In the past,” Oleander began, startling her out of her observations, “sports-themed heroes were comedy-adjacent, or at least never truly serious. Southpaw, one of the first, was known for, despite their lethal ability to throw things with far more power, speed and range the smaller said object was, generally being funny and focusing on comedy instead of the raw stopping power they had.”

Oleander motioned towards the screen. “Nowadays, though, the appeal of sports heroes isn’t inherently tied to them being comedic. Sports heroes have a wide net for appeal, as even if they are themed after a sport a person might not be interested in, there is a general appeal to some people about a hero who is, in general, _sporty_.”

“Who are these, anyway?” Taylor found herself asking, flicking her eyes between the three on the display.

Oleander smiled at her, and it was a genuine, fond smile. “Linebacker’s a cape from New York. He can become super strong, super durable, and impossible to move unless he wants to move by layering semi-tangible duplicates over his physical body. The next is Dribble, a Ward - like you - from Baltimore, who can create orbs of water which start out big and generate concussive blasts of water on hitting something, bouncing away, becoming smaller and more dangerous as a projectile. Lastly, there’s 9-Iron, a hero from the Toronto branch, she has an effect where consecutive attacks she makes results in the number of impacts she causes being increased with each attack.”

Taylor swallowed, fidgeting in her seat a little, glancing between them. They did _look_ professional, to his credit, didn’t seem like the sort of hero who got made fun of by people or acted as the butt of a joke.

“You might not have noticed, but none of these people have powers that perfectly _work_ with their branding either. Dribble’s the closest, bouncing projectiles made out of water do fit the name, but Linebacker’s power makes him shimmer, gives him more of a ghostly effect, and 9-Iron’s power doesn’t relate to golf _at all_ , though the number in the name does act as a thematic tie to her powers.” Oleander tapped the screen a few times, before pulling back and sitting down into his seat. “Things don’t have to work perfectly with branding, especially specific ones, we are more than willing to focus more on hitting the _themes_ instead of actual application. This is, in fact, where you come in.”

Swivelling the screen back around, though not too much that Taylor couldn’t see it, Oleander slipped his hand back onto his mouse, minimized the three pictures, and brought up another page. This one had no images, just names, three in total: Volley, Curveball, and Swish. Digesting that, she glanced back at Oleander, who was himself looking at her curiously.

“That’s not all we have,” he clarified after a moment. “These are just the three names which I think would do us best, and are currently available. Due to your connection to Shrike, we had to avoid sports terminology that would be a bit too... glaring. An example is Spike, which has its uses in several sports, as well as one of our original ideas for your name, that being Caber. There’s also the issue of some sports terminology having secondary meanings which aren’t at all acceptable for Wards, such as Pitcher, Catcher, Screwball, anything to do with Switch in baseball terminology, that sort of thing. So, we narrowed our work down to the three you see: Volley, Curveball, and Swish.”

Leaning back in his seat, Oleander brought up an image. It was clearly a design document, an outfit separated into pieces: one was a near-identical skin-tight bodysuit to the one she’d been wearing, though this one covered her feet and stopped just short of her wrists, a blue-and-white volleyball jersey and shorts combo with ‘ENE’ written where the numbers would’ve gone, with ‘Volley’ written under it in significantly smaller text. The jersey itself was bulkier than what she was used to seeing, somewhere between a windbreaker and a shirt, and came with a hood that when pulled up would cover her hair and acted as a place to clip a visor to. There were additional pieces of equipment visible, elbow and leg pads, padded gloves and robust-looking sneakers, all coming together to give a very blatant impression of a volleyball player, albeit one kitted out for combat.

“Volley is what I would consider our softest sports-themed option,” Oleander continued, folding his fingers together as he let her process what she was seeing. “Your outfit is, clearly, inspired by volleyball and intended to evoke comparisons, but as a name, it gives you space to begin reintroducing spears or darts into your equipment once you’re out of probation and once you’ve been seen enough times that your theming is cemented in the eyes of the people.”

He brought up the next image. This one was more distinct, there was no skin-tight bodysuit, just a very old-school baseball outfit, poofy pants, cleats and all, coloured red and white with a hat and domino mask. There was a specific bit of design work that showed an opening for where she’d put her ponytail up, if she had the need for it. It was, however, otherwise bland, less detailed than Volley, seemingly more of a secondary option that he had included because he could.

“Curveball is a pretty commonly traded name. It’s been used about six times, mostly Wards, and its branding is restrictive. It’s a _hard_ sports theme, as until you shed the name you’ll only ever be able to make baseball-related things, primarily about the baseballs themselves. Bats, if you could make them, might work, and it lends itself well to mobility equipment to a certain degree, but I’m personally less fond of it.”

Finally, the last image. This one was basketball themed, a loose, sleeveless jersey with a similar ENE name printed across the front, with ‘Swish’ underneath it, mirrored on the back. It was coloured black and green, with the green itself used more as detailing, looking bright and sharp against the shorts and sleeveless jersey. This one, like Volley, came with the skin-tight bodysuit, presumably because there wasn’t that much coverage, but it only came with what looked like wrist warmers, a sleek acid-green visor, and big, springy looking sneakers instead of gloves and more robust shoes.

“Swish is somewhere between soft and hard. As far as terminology goes, it’s only really found relevance in games involving nets or goals, which means you are restricted to ball games, but there’s more breadth there than either Volley or Curveball can supply. However, as you can see, the primary influence for the design is basketball, and it’s more of a side-option to Volley, as it provides about the same sort of aesthetic and thematic goals - small throwable projectiles made to look like volleyballs and basketballs, maybe some throwable nets - though you likely wouldn’t get access to sharp projectiles unless you decided to retire the name after leaving the Wards.”

Taylor pursed her lips, drumming her fingers over the desk. “What about the other options?” She finally found herself asking, still processing all that she’d been shown.

“They’re not great,” Oleander admitted. “These are the broadest and open-ended ones, restrictive branding, yes, but... not so much that we’ll be expecting you to make one thing and only one thing.”

Taylor grimaced, bringing up a hand to rub at her face, suddenly feeling a bit more tired than she had been going into this. “Why are we so obsessed with sports names? Why can’t I just be something else?”

Oleander shot her a wan smile. “Sports heroes are good for general popularity and bring in a lot of PR contracts to help fund the branch. Brockton hasn’t had a sports-themed hero in about six years, in part due to how generally unfriendly the cape community can be in Brockton. Sports themed heroes tend to appear naturally out of people passionate for sports, and while passionate fans and players exist here, people don’t really treat heroics or villainy as something they can blend their passions with. The stakes are too high.”

“Then why me?” Taylor asked, not quite able to keep the frustration out of her voice. She just—she hadn’t expected this, had expected restrictions to her darts and spears, sure, but... not this. She had been so focused on that type of equipment, penetrative weapons, it would take _months_ to get back to where she was with things like throwable balls.

“Honestly?” Oleander asked. “Opportunity and circumstances. I’ll be frank, nobody on the staff team wants you within a hundred feet of a sharp object unless you’re under observation. Giving you a branding that forces you to make balls and nets and things of the like does that job for us, and it helps separate you from Shrike, even if, to be clear, people will know that you _were_ Shrike. There’s no real hiding that, handheld projectile Tinkers aren’t exactly popping up like weeds.”

Taylor deflated, leaning back into her chair. This was... difficult, but she could cope with it.

“To be even more candid, Volley is the main option we were considering. We gave you more options because we had to, but Volley handles not restricting you entirely from the tech you had put so much effort into while still keeping you away from sharp objects for the immediate future. It’s a good blend, and it’s a name that’s only been used once before, a vigilante from Chicago back when reporting on capes was _very_ spotty and infrequent.” Oleander paused, bringing Volley’s design document back up. “I personally think this is the best option, but if none of this is appealing, we can begin to look into more niche options. This meeting has no hard time limit for a good reason, we are more than aware of how sensitive branding can be to the cape themselves. Nobody wants to end up being named something they loathe, after all.”

“If I choose Volley, will I have to join a volleyball team?” She really hoped not.

Oleander snorted. “The opposite. We’ll probably bring a few people in to teach you the basics, but you won’t be forced to chuck your balls around like a volleyball player, just pose like one and hold yourself like one. It would be counterproductive to have the volleyball-themed hero be a volleyball player on any team. Too much exposure to people who might follow your career closely enough to compare you to her. No, I’m pretty sure they’ll want you to join any other sports team for part of your probation.”

Rubbing her eyes, Taylor breathed out through her nose and tried to imagine herself in that outfit, helping people, using thrown balls and nets to capture targets. She could even kinda get an image of the skeletal frame she would wear around the arms and legs, how she could blend them in with the colours on display, how it might work. It was doable, not what she wanted, but as far as she could tell, it was either her best option or the closest thing to it.

Opening her eyes, Taylor nodded. “Let’s try Volley, then?”

Oleander beamed. “Great! I have a few examples of the costume we put together last night, none of which would fit you right now, but at the very least I can tell you about how that hood works. We can also talk about what you might want to change with the design, I am absolutely open to suggestions.”

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

“So, I heard we got a new Ward.”

Glancing up from her phone, Sophia shot a flat look at Dennis, who was currently hanging over the back of the sofa, smiling like he wouldn’t melt butter in his mouth. “Yeah.”

“Is she really the Shrike?” He probed, eyes flicking down at her phone.

Sophia angled the damn thing away so he couldn’t read any of the texts Emma sent her. “Yeah.”

“What do you think they’ll saddle her with? Shrike isn’t a great look, name wise. I really, really hope it’s Yeet.”

Chris choked from his place across from her, dropping his chopsticks back into the paper takeout box and jamming a closed fist to his chest. Finally, after some struggle, he swallowed whatever he was choking on, eyes visibly watering. “Not cool,” he croaked, nudging the box of takeout further into the middle of the table and away from him. “That was wasabi.”

Dennis chortled. “My naming sense is _impeccable_ ,” he crowed, finally removing the top half of his body from the back of the sofa and making his way around, dropping himself without a care into the cushion at the end opposite to her. “You’re just jealous.”

Something like yearning flickered over Chris’s face before the mask fell back into place and he looked away with a tepid, casual shrug. “I’m not the one dating Sophia,” he said a bit sharply, the mask not carrying into his tone. Sophia shut her eyes as Dennis made an odd, startled noise from the other side of the couch, somewhere between a choke and a wordless noise of confusion.

“No way,” Dennis managed to get out after taking some time to himself, Sophia turned her head to see him staring her down, the shock on his face almost palpable. “He’s joking, right?”

Sometimes saying nothing was itself an answer, and Sophia simply redirected her gaze back to her phone, shooting off another text to Emma about the possible school reopening date.

“Oh my god, you’re serious.”

“Where is Dart, anyway?” Chris asked.

Sophia shrugged, not looking up from her phone. “Rebranding right now, I think. She said she’s leaving tomorrow to do testing.”

“Huh, that’s pretty quick. It took them a week to get me to the testing area.” Chris went quiet for a moment, audibly shifting in his seat as the sound of him picking up his takeout box filled the air. “She’ll probably be there for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then.”

Sophia blinked, glancing up. _That_ was news to her, why hadn’t Taylor..? “Why?”

“Oh, uh. They do specialized testing, I’m not allowed to say _specifically_ since, non-disclosure agreements and all, but they make you build something and Tinkers can take more than a day. Usually, they give you like, three days to do it? First day is mostly normal testing, questions, stuff like that, then they do the building stuff which takes up the rest of the time.” Chris paused, tilting his head back. “Mine took two days, hers might take less or more. I don’t know her building process.”

Tapping in a quick message to Emma, Sophia shifted over to Taylor and shot her a text, relaying most of that information. When no reply was immediately forthcoming - she _was_ still in a meeting, after all - she let the phone dip into her lap and glanced up, ignoring Dennis’ vacant staring at the ceiling and turning entirely to Chris. “So, she’ll probably be back by Monday?”

“At the latest,” Chris confirmed, shifting a bit in his seat as he shovelled a bit more of his lunch into his mouth. “The testing place for Tinkers is just out of city limits, comes with a big field to make sure if anything explodes it doesn’t take out anything valuable. It’s a few hours of driving.”

“We have more than one testing range?” Dennis murmured distractedly.

Chris made a low noise, one that didn’t sound confident. “Kinda? I think the testing range I - and probably Dart - went to is shared between all of the east coast, and it’s just that we’re close to it. I know for a fact there was a really young kid from Boston doing his testing while I was there, though I didn’t really see him much. I think he was called... Rookery? Ornithopter-styled drones or something? I can’t really remember, it’s been a few years.”

Sophia pushed down on the knot swelling in her gut. “Do they let you have phones and stuff there?”

“So long as you don’t take pictures,” Chris replied, a glint in his eye that made Sophia somewhat uncomfortable, like he was seeing something she wasn’t. Too perceptive. “They can take it away if she does.”

The knot untangled a bit, and Sophia opted not to think too much about _why_ that was. “Well, at least she won’t worry Emma sick,” Sophia muttered.

“You were _really_ dating the Shrike?” Dennis repeated.

“She _is_ dating the Shrike,” Chris reminded just as quickly, cutting in before Sophia could go tell him to go fuck himself. “Just because she’s got another name now doesn’t mean much.”

“So much makes sense now,” Dennis whispered, speaking with an annoying lilt to his voice that made Sophia want to hit him. “I always did wonder what type of person it would take, but considering...”

 _I really hope that my ‘type’ isn’t broken girls on their last legs looking for an out_ , a part of her mind interjected, but instead of saying anything like that, she aimed a kick at Dennis’ knee instead. The cry of pain was, to its credit, far more cathartic than blurting out something personal in front of one person she actually liked and another person she could barely remain in the same room as.

Chris just gave her another look, endlessly perceptive and only a little ruffled.


	20. B-TRACK 2.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor gets tested, Sophia talks Emma down from a ledge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for a dissociative episode. 
> 
> I somehow wrote this in one sitting. Thank you to Tempestuous for looking over this for me.

The gravel beneath the heel of her shoes was delightfully crunchy as she stepped out of the unmarked van she had spent the last three and a half hours in, the gritty churn beneath the weight of her body almost too much after hours of near-total silence, occupied only by the books she had - _thank god_ \- thought to bring with her and the unchanging interior wall of the van. For what otherwise looked like a plain white utility vehicle, the thing had near-perfect suspension and a faraday cage, the latter of which had stopped her from fooling around on her phone as a way to waste the time.

It was about noon - she had left at around nine in the morning, after all - but it didn’t show. The skies were miserably overcast, a uniform blanket of pale white cutting off the blue from the sky, leaving everything slightly dimmer. Not that the sun was needed for much, of course, this far south in New Hampshire was a rural region full of rocky hills and long stretches of highway with nothing near them beside Brockton Bay itself, which was at this point miles and miles away.

Letting her eyes adjust to what little glare penetrated the overcast sky, Taylor found herself thoroughly underwhelmed by the East Coast Regional Parahuman Testing Facility. It was, in a word, a collection of four blocky buildings arranged in a rough cross, albeit one with an empty space in the middle. The area that surrounded it was a not-insignificant amount of frost-gnawed, brown grass field, encircled by a tall, ten-foot-tall wire mesh fence with a gravel road that connected what appeared to be the main building to the gate which acted as the only exit if you didn’t fancy climbing a fence. Snow, crusted and brown, had clumped up into icy piles at the foot of each bunker-like structure, though for the most part it looked as though the area hadn’t gotten snow in well over a month.

Glancing towards the building closest to her - the main building, in this instance, she had been dropped off within maybe fifteen feet of the front door - Taylor spotted a sign. It took a few more moments for her eyes to adjust enough, but the ‘PLEASE CHECK IN AT THE DESK NEW ARRIVALS’ written in big, blocky text over what looked like a sheet of printer paper haphazardly taped to the wall, was direct enough to get the point across. Yawning into the back of her hand, Taylor adjusted her bag’s strap on her shoulder, reached up to make sure the requisite domino mask hadn’t fallen off without her noticing - it had happened before, and once _was_ more than enough - and trudged her way towards the door.

Opening the door and stepping through, Taylor’s first impression of the facility wasn’t tested by the interior of the main building. It was, to their very barebones credit, warmer than the outside, though it still felt lukewarm, but was otherwise a single uniform square room with a clinical white floor, white ceiling, and white walls. The only things in the room were a single desk that formed a U-shape in the dead center of the room and a smattering of uncomfortable-looking metal benches interspersed throughout the space. The woman behind the desk, brown-haired, brown-eyed, brown-skinned, was as generic and uniform as the rest of the place, almost as though someone had handpicked her for looking so completely normal while also being colour coded.

Okay, that might’ve been a little mean. Swallowing her discomfort, Taylor stepped through the threshold, letting the door swing shut behind her, ignoring the itch in her bones that screamed at her for cutting off a way to get free and away from the facility. She understood, rationally, that she was attributing a lot of the trauma from that summer to a place that was here to help her, to get her on the right track, but _emotionally_ it was taking everything in her power to even begin to step towards the woman at the front desk, each footfall another inch away from what her mind was blaring at her as _freedom_.

“Miss?” The secretary asked, her voice gentle.

Taylor swallowed, ran her tongue along her dry bottom lip, and forced herself to close the distance between herself and the front desk. “I’m, uh, Volley. Here for my testing.”

 _Here for three days_ , something hissed in the back of her head. She quashed it.

The secretary smiled gently. “Of course, I’ll call the researcher who will be overseeing your testing in just a moment. Do you have any health concerns we should know about beforehand? Things that might not have come up on the file they sent over, allergies you think you have but never got tested, any phobias, things like that?”

“No,” Taylor blurted before she could really process the entire question.

The woman’s smile didn’t strain whatsoever. “Alright. Please take a seat, Ms. Caron should be down in a moment.”

Mechanically, Taylor found herself a bench and lowered herself down onto it, folding each hand over each of her knees, flexing her fingers in rhythmic squeezes. She took in a breath, slow and hoarse, before letting one out through her nose, tried to center herself. It didn’t come easy, but a few more deep breaths, a few more moments to remind herself that the walls were not wooden like the cabin, that the people here weren’t The Clan, and something inside of her settled, placated for the time being.

She knew it would be back, but that was a problem for future Taylor.

Swallowing around nothing, Taylor reoriented her focus, dragged her eyes along uniform walls and stared up at the buzzing overhead lights. She drummed her fingers over the rough texture of her sweatpants, then her sweatshirt, an outfit she had four extras of packed away in her bag. They had been part of the rules, you had to wear them when you went, apparently if only to ensure that bad actors or possible security risks couldn’t use your clothing to identify you after the fact. She wasn’t entirely sure she bought that explanation, but then she wasn’t a security professional, so what did she know?

A door behind and to the left of the front desk let out a sharp click, then started to buzz. It creaked open seconds later, just wide enough to let the woman behind it peek the top half of her body through the opening. She had a head of straight black hair, cut into bangs just above her eyebrows, with warm brown skin that crinkled around her black eyes, and lips the colour of cherries. Her eyes scanned over the room, a quick flick, before landing on Taylor, her face lighting up as she pushed the door fully open. “Dart, right?”

Taylor blinked slowly, took in the sight of a graphic t-shirt - depicting a koala with a bloody claymore - and jeans that hugged her body, with chucks the colour of her lips framing her shoes. Admittedly, a white coat had been thrown over the ensemble, but it was clearly done after the fact, more of an acknowledgement that she was a researcher and had to have some professionalism, but not so much that she couldn’t wear her claymore koala t-shirt.

Twitching her fingers, Taylor forced herself back into the present, working to keep her face carefully neutral. “It’s Volley now, actually. Got it yesterday.”

“That works a lot better,” the woman said easily, still holding the door open. “I’m Melissa Caron, one of the main staff members of the facility. I’ll be overseeing all stages of your testing alongside my support team. Are you ready to get started?”

Was she? Would they grind everything to a halt if she said no? What agency did she have? Would they stop her from leaving? From calling it quits and going home? From escaping?

No, that wasn’t productive. “Yeah,” she lied.

Melissa either didn’t catch the lie or was polite enough to pretend otherwise. “Good! We’re starting right down this hall, so if you could leave your bag with the secretary—”

“Am I allowed to bring it with me?” Taylor interrupted before she could think better of it.

Melissa blinked slowly. “There’s no reason not to. I just thought it’d be a chore to haul around, it looks pretty heavy.”

It was, but it had everything she needed in it, her phone - _they will take it and_ no, no, get out of that train of thought, she already knew about the rules, they would not take it if she didn’t start taking photos of a classified research facility - and everything else. It was _hers_ , and she probably wouldn’t cope with it being taken from her right now. “It’s fine.”

“If you say so,” Melissa said distractedly, glancing at the watch around her wrist. “We need to get to work if you want any time at all to start with your IVR testing before the day is over.”

“IVR?” Taylor asked as she rose, stumbling a bit as the strap to her bag dug into the flesh of her nape.

Melissa winced. “You’ll find out _after_ you sign the NDA that we have waiting for you, okay?”

That was fair enough, if a bit worrying. Making her way past the front desk, Taylor reached out to hold the door open herself, letting Melissa pull away from it and start down the hallway. She trailed after the researcher, the door swinging shut behind laboriously, a low creak and groan of unoiled hinges that made her ears ring. The corridor they were walking down was barren otherwise, with the occasional door along the sides of the wall, none of them marked with a plaque or anything that might identify their purpose, though just from the composition of the building she was pretty sure they were janitor’s closets.

They reached the far other end of the corridor a short while after, passing through a door that had been propped open on a rock someone had clearly dragged in from the outside, a smear of gravel and mud on the floor next to it. The space they stepped into was, by contrast, actually different and less uniform - it was about three or four times the size of the entry room - the closest comparison she could make was Winslow’s gym, though it wasn’t a long rectangle but rather what seemed to be a perfectly uniform square. The floors had transitioned to pure concrete, and the walls themselves had exposed metal running along them leading up to the ceiling. Someone had additionally set up foamy dividers - like the sort of material office ceilings are made out of - to section off parts of the area, not that she could see what the reason for them was.

Almost immediately, Melissa’s staff team descended on them with interested eyes. There were nine of them all told, five men and four women, all wearing that similar mash of civilian clothes - graphic t-shirts, jeans, that sort of thing - with a white laboratory coat thrown over them. One woman in particular with a short-cropped shock of acidic green hair, had even tucked her coat into her belt, making it poof up and look almost comical.

“Get it listed down that she’s Volley now, Craig!” Melissa called out, prompting a lanky guy about six feet tall, with milky skin and curly brown hair pulled back into a bun, to turn and rush towards a fold-out table that had been set up, retrieving a pencil from his pocket and going at what looked like a scattering of documents with gusto.

Turning to her, Melissa smiled. “Welcome to testing ground A. I can’t tell you much about it until Craig over there finishes writing your name in, but after you sign the litany of non-disclosure agreements, we can get started.”

Taylor opened her mouth to say something only to be interrupted by Craig rushing back into her line of sight, ferrying with him a clipboard, upon which a pen and about eighteen pages were stacked, held in place by the metal clamp. He extended his arm out to Melissa, who took it and then approached her, turning her body around so that they could both look at it, her shoulder nearly touching Taylor’s, though the way she kept from skin contact spoke to prior experience or training about how to handle parahumans. That or touch aversion; she should probably stop reading too deeply into things.

Taking the pen when it was offered by Melissa, Taylor started signing her name - they had done a tortuous amount of basic signature work after they agreed upon Volley; Oleander had all but drilled the damn motions into her head - and didn’t stop for at least a few minutes. To the credit of the PRT, as far as Melissa could explain and she could extrapolate from the borderline pig latin-esque legalese, she was just agreeing to never tell anyone the exact specifics of what they tested for outside of generalities, with the exception of other Wards, who could be let on any information that wasn’t the IVR assessment. What that was, _exactly_ , still hadn’t been clarified, and the document made no attempt to do so either, which didn’t bode very well.

Finally, though, after no doubt contributing to her future carpal tunnel, Taylor had signed Volley next to a dozen times and they were finished. The clipboard was handed back to Craig, who placed it back on the table, and Melissa moved back to the place in front of her, the rest of the staff coming to a stop at various places behind her. It was a fight to push down against the urge to wither beneath their collective stares; she didn’t do well with crowds, hadn’t even before Brent, and the way they scrutinized her _seriously_ wasn’t helping.

“Right!” Melissa said after another few moments. “The first thing we’re going to be doing today is a basic discussion about your powers. Craig will go get some seats”—the short groan from Craig was heard but not acknowledged by anyone in the room—“and we’ll go over what _we_ know and what _you_ know before moving on to testing what we believe is your Thinker ability. After that, we’ll move on to another discussion session about your Tinker ability, classifying the specifics of what you can make and how, before finally we’ll move on to your IVR benchmark, or, in more literal terms, your Immediate Violent Retaliation rating.”

Taylor blinked slowly, digested the words for a few moments. “What exactly _is_ that, though?”

“Well, IVR testing is something the PRT research team came up with after a Tinker decided to make the most lethal thing they possibly could after being spurned by a Protectorate-aligned hero they were infatuated with. It’s what makes testing last up to three days. Basically, what we do is we give you as many resources as you need, a place to work, examples of other tech, and we ask you to make the most lethal thing you can within the time constraints available.”

Taylor swallowed dryly, flexing her fingers against her pant leg.

“You can see why we needed that NDA,” Melissa said wryly, mouthing a ‘thank you’ at Craig as he handed her a seat, Taylor doing the same as he offered up one to her. “It’s necessary to establish a benchmark and can help us figure out what you might need as a Tinker which is unique to others. Yet, still, it doesn’t _look_ very good on paper, does it? We’re getting both kids and adults to make possibly _lethal_ weaponry, the media would go to town if they found out about it, to be brutally honest with you.”

She could see it, yeah. Things also made a lot more sense, the amount of time she had been given was because Tinkers generally couldn’t just make things in an hour like that, though she had heard about some Tinkers taking longer than others, but still, the limited amount of time was probably, itself, part of the test. It was establishing what she could do if she had access to a large amount of resources - which, she might eventually have as a member of the Protectorate - and a grudge strong enough to build something dangerously lethal with the sole intent to hurt someone with it.

Taylor bit down on a shudder, blinked away the images of Hookwolf’s core spilling runny copper over the concrete.

Maneuvering her seat around so that she could sit on it, Taylor watched as Melissa did the same. A short time later, Craig was back for the third time, just this time around with a fold out table, much smaller than the one her clipboard was on, and placed it between the two of them. Lifting her chair, Taylor scooched forward until she was flush against it, Melissa doing much the same, if without so much screeching as metal legs dragged against concrete.

Finally settled, Melissa smiled at her. “So, to begin with, let's classify how the PRT believes your powers work.”

Taylor shifted back into her seat, breathing out through her nose.

“For starters, the PRT believes you are a ‘Tinker who specializes in handheld weaponry, but is not constrained to it, and can make augmentative equipment to help aid her in maneuvering around areas and throwing her weaponry. Her projectiles are diverse, but restrained by either internal mechanisms which aid them mid-flight, or are entirely hand-thrown, limiting their range.’” Melissa breathed in, reaching out her hand wordlessly as one of the staff members placed a small file into her palm, which she began to thumb through, Taylor just barely making out ‘Shrike’ written across the front cover in bold letters. “They also believe you have some form of enhanced accuracy, innate in some way. How close were they?”

Taylor bit down on the reflexive urge to lie, reminded herself that they were here to _help_ her. “I specialize in projectiles,” she began slowly, folding her fingers together, tugging at them nervously until the knuckle of her index finger popped painlessly, releasing the pressure from her joints. “It’s just, they suck when they have auxiliary delivery mechanisms. I made a gun as one of the first things I did, but it was basically _just_ a gun with fancy gunpowder and a bullet that was, yeah, better, but, not as good as anything I can make where it’s _me_ throwing it.”

Melissa nodded, jotting that down with one hand while the other - fingernails stained the same pretty red of her lips - motioned for her to continue.

“When they don’t, though, I can add stuff to them. A javelin with a propulsion system, darts with weird effects, I couldn’t do that with bullets, couldn’t do that with _arrows_ either. Something about my stuff is fragile, it breaks if I use it in melee in _any_ way, usually hurting me in the process. I can’t make arrows which come with cool effects because the bowstring puts enough force on it that adding it would make it structurally unsound, or something like that. I don’t think it’s like that because my stuff is inherently fragile, I’ve thrown javelins into walls before without them shattering, but it just, that’s what my power tells me.”

Another wordless motion to continue. Taylor swallowed down the nervousness in her throat.

“My Thinker power, I think, kinda explains it. I don’t really have _enhanced accuracy_ , necessarily. When I’m holding something I can lift under my own weight, I just know where it’ll go if I throw it. It corrects to how I’m going to throw things instantly, it’s not... not quite like, a line, like in those pool games online where you can see where the ball is going to go? I can’t _see_ a line, but I can feel it, and I know where it’ll land. I used it a lot when I first started out to learn how to throw things properly, adjusting how I was going to chuck something until I reached the furthest distance I could.”

Melissa glanced up at that. “Is it pre-emptive? The Thinker power, I mean. Does it always tell you where it’ll go, even if you don’t really intend to throw it?”

Thinking back on it... “Yeah, is that weird?”

“Oh! Yes, absolutely, but that’s parahuman powers for you. Hey, Craig, list down a P-9 test for the Thinker gauntlet. I wanna see if what I think is going on _is_ going on,” Melissa said, not taking her eyes off of Taylor for a few more seconds, before finally dropping them down to the page. “So, it seems we were close, just missing the context. That’s good, once we had this Tinker in and we assumed they specialized in magnets, because most of their stuff included magnetism, but turns out they specialized in _electrical currents_ and we had to restructure a lot of stuff to compensate for that.”

Taylor shifted, glancing nervously at the table again.

“Mind if I ask a few more questions?” Melissa asked, though the tone of her voice implied she figured it would be a yes and she was just being polite.

She shrugged. “Sure.”

“Right, so, when your tech fails, does it just blow out? Like does it stop working and fizz and hiss, or does it break apart?”

“Break apart.” She’d learned that the hard way the first time she’d tried to use a knife to just stab a target, the entire thing had broken into viscerally sharp shrapnel and had cut her palm and wrist open. It hadn’t been a deep cut, but it had been hard to hide for the month it took to heal properly.

“Can you block attacks with your tech, or does that cause it to shatter too?”

Taylor blinked. “I don’t know.”

Melissa pursed her lips. “That can be tested back at Brockton for you, then. You said your Thinker power works if you’re _holding_ something, does it work with a sling?”

That _was_ something she had tried. “It doesn’t. Even with things I can spin before I throw makes it fizzle a bit. A bola I made was really bad with getting accurate shots. The time I made a gun, it didn’t tell me how to shoot it or where the bullet would go, but instead told me where the gun would go if I threw _that._ ”

There was a snort from somewhere in the throng of faceless, nameless researchers. Melissa shot the entire group an unimpressed look.

“Thank you for being patient with me. We just have one more: does your Thinker power tell you where the projectile will go for the entire time it's in motion, or only for the arc of your throw?”

“The entire time.” She’d once picked up one of those unreasonably bouncy balls that had been inspired by a Tinker from Mexico and had spent the rest of the day feeling like she had just done hours of difficult arithmetic, like she’d worn out her brain and left it with a dull ache not unlike overworking a muscle. To her power’s credit, though, she had known exactly where the ball would stop after ricocheting around the store like a ballistic weapon, for all the good it had done her.

Melissa jotted that down. “Alrighty!” She chirped, folding the pages together and handing them off to the nearest member of her team, that being Craig. Again. Jeez, they either hated the dude or his job was literally being a busboy, and going from the way he was looking longingly at the door, it was probably the former.

“So, how would you like to throw some breakable objects?”

* * *

Turns out, the place where they did practical testing - outside of the IVR building, which is where her room for the next three days was also located, incidentally - wasn’t in the building she had arrived at. Instead, it was the building to the left of it, and for all that it outwardly looked almost identical to the main building, the interior quickly told her otherwise. Apparently, considering this facility was mainly for Tinkers, the building’s main purpose wasn’t to test non-Tinker powers, but rather to test Tinkertech under certain environmental controls. A few Tinkers even apparently worked there, if Melissa was to be believed, though she saw not hide nor hair of any of them.

The room they had her in now looked like a shooting range, just with only one lane and with walls made out of glass, with observation areas on either side of it.

“Beginning test four, now that our initial tests are over,” Melissa’s voice announced, crackly from the PR system it was being routed through. “Please access the third shelf and take object four from it.”

The shelf in question was a six-tiered cabinet that was comically wide, with enough space for twenty or more objects on each shelf. It was recessed into the wall, and barely a few steps away from the opening they had been making her chuck things through, though she was pretty sure they weren’t going to make her test everything in it. Or at least she _really_ hoped they weren’t.

Sidling over to the storage space, Taylor scanned her eyes along the shelves, the numbers engraved beneath each object. Finding object four on shelf three was easy, but left her with more questions than answers. Still, considering the last time she asked about a specific object she’d spent five minutes listening to Melissa wax poetic about another Tinker, Taylor decided against asking about why exactly they were making her throw a bowling ball and just hugged the heavy thing against her chest, making her way back to the waist-high barrier that had stopped her from entering the lane, only to find it slowly sliding into the ground without a sound.

Glancing curiously at one of the researchers behind the glass, she was met with a bright cheery smile.

“Volley,” Melissa’s voice cut in, loud over the intercom. “Please attempt to bowl the ball towards the target and tell us how your power responded.”

The target, which was slowly sliding into place along an adjustable rail system, was what looked like a foam cut out of a bowling pin. Classy.

Tucking the tips of her fingers into the indents along the ball, Taylor screwed her eyes shut and tried to remember the one family outing to a bowling alley and the middle school graduation field trip her shitty, low-income school had just barely managed to shell out for. It wasn’t hard to bowl, per-se, but opening her eyes back up, sinking back into the familiar feeling of her power, Taylor was pretty sure she’d do better this time.

Her power didn’t fight her for it, surprisingly enough. She could feel the path between the object and the target, the way it traced along the ground, and let it guide her for a straight throw. She tossed it underhand, not bothering to wind up much for it - the alley wasn’t all that long - and, as her power had predicted, the ball skipped and skidded along the rough ground before cracking dead on into the foam cut-out with enough force to break a chunk of it off. The slight slope to the lane near the end made the ball roll down it, again, just as her power predicted, and it landed in the ditch alongside three out of four other projectiles.

The waist-high divider quickly slid back up into place, now that she no longer had the ball.

“My power told me exactly where it would go,” Taylor said, pitching her volume so that she wouldn’t have to repeat herself. “I’m surprised it did, for some reason I always just... kinda associated it with things in flight.”

“That happens,” Melissa’s voice agreed, crackling dully. “We get caught in notions about our powers, and sometimes they _are_ true, you have hard limits, everyone does, but there’s generally more to things than we expect. Now, time to do the testing I was hoping for, please go to shelf one, object two.”

Finding the one they wanted her to pick up was, again, not terribly difficult. This time it was just another one of those heavy, durable plastic balls that they had her throw for two out of the four initial tests, and she made her way back to the range with it in her palm, pushing the feeling of her power to the back of her mind for the moment.

“Please prepare to throw the ball straight forward, and tell me if your power suddenly behaves weirdly.”

Blinking slowly, but not questioning it, Taylor reached back out to her power, pushed intent into it. It was hard to explain, but she could sort of shut the power out if she tried really hard not to think about throwing anything, it sort of just faded into the background. Intent to throw, therefore, played a significant role in her power, and by intending to throw it, feeling herself tense, getting ready to, her power cut through the din of her mind and charted a path. If she threw it now, it would fly straight forward and into the wall without anything blocking it.

Or, well, it would’ve, because barely a few seconds later her power adjusted sharply, and now suddenly it was telling her it would bounce back off of nothing before—and it was gone. Barely a breath later, a target - one of those stereotypical circular boards with rings and a bullseye - shot across the adjustable rail like a bullet, so quick she couldn’t follow it with her eyes.

Her power knew that it had been coming. What the _fuck_.

“Uhm,” Taylor started, finding herself a bit unsteady. “It was just a straight line until, well, it suddenly told me it was going to bounce off of nothing, and then that board flew across the rail.”

There was another moment of silence, the sound of the intercom crackling ringing dully into the range.

“Welp, that proves my theory. Marcus loses the pot. Congratulations Volley, like I assumed, you’re technically precognitive! Very limited, mind you, within the time it would take for what you throw to start and finish, but hey, apparently it counts for something. I’m pretty sure your Thinker power works by simulating the arc of your throw instead of just showing you where it’ll go statically.”

She wasn’t sure what to do with this information. In fact, she was so unsure that she relayed _that_ information.

There was a short burst of laughter from Melissa, made to sound almost sinister by the crackle in the intercom. Or, at least, she _really hoped_ it was the intercom.

“Oh, Volley, why, now you get to do a _lot_ more testing!”

It wasn’t the intercom.

* * *

It was starting to dip into the evening by the time they had finished testing her ability to throw things, and that familiar dull ache of overuse was back in her brain. She couldn’t call it a headache, and in fact she had gotten confirmation it wasn’t a Thinker headache, not _quite_. Generally, secondary Thinkers didn’t get them, mostly because secondary Thinker abilities were usually augmentative in some way, and always on, but you could still overwork your brain and strain it from overuse. It wouldn’t impede her cognitive faculties, but it was a persistent reminder that she had overdone it a little.

Melissa smiled back at her as she pushed the door open, leading them not back into the testing ground, but rather into what looked to be an office space. The floor was hardwood, a sharp contrast to the concrete and metal tiles that had filled up everything else, and it was set up in such a way that the room - still as square as any other, unfortunately - had a main desk and a computer chair, and a single couch that sat behind it, flush against a wall, while the rest of the space was filled out by bookcases. It was homely, almost nostalgic from the way Melissa - she was assuming it was her office, anyway - had crammed the bookcases in, even when she didn’t really have the space for them.

Taking a seat on the couch and running a hand through her hair, Taylor watched as Melissa pulled her big, cushy-looking computer chair out, swivelled it around, and sat down in it. “This is the last formal test we’ll be doing before your IVR, which is more focused on you and we won’t be interfering with it. To put it bluntly, this is a test to go over what the PRT considers to be the generalized methods of how Tinkers work.”

Taylor nodded, eyes lidded, the ache in her brain blessedly starting to recede.

“This is going to involve some thinking patterns I’ll need you to do. It’ll be a lot of questions, but I will attempt to have you focus on your creation process in a few instances. If you feel like you need to have your hands on something when we do this, or have an itch to fiddle with something, both of which _are_ common, we have a few fidget toys and a large number of more complicated handheld puzzles for you to play around with.”

Blinking blearily, Taylor glanced towards the table just to the right of the couch, on which a bucket full of colorful toys sat. At the very top, a Rubix cube stared almost reproachfully at her, calling out to her. She felt her fingers twitch, and reached out to take it, smothering her power’s insistent whisper that she could chuck it right into Melissa’s face before it could really begin to ramp up.

“Okay, so, to begin with, we’ll start with the fugue scale. I know you’re probably _aware_ of the concept of a Tinker fugue, they’re relatively pop cultural, it’s a thing they’re known for, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Specifically, what I want to discuss is how much awareness you retain while Tinkering.”

That... didn’t make a lot of sense. “I’m not sure I follow. I’m always aware.”

Melissa smiled. “Not everyone is, and you might not be either, I’ll get to questions intended to bring up inconsistencies in a second. Basically, let's say we have a line, on one end is Dragon, and on the other end is... Gadget. Gadget, when he sits down at his workbench to make something, does not remember a single moment of the Tinkering process. He basically goes to sleep and wakes up with a few more oil stains and a new piece of tech, one he might’ve chosen and planned to make, but nonetheless he doesn’t remember doing it. Dragon, meanwhile, remains aware of every single moment of her creation process.”

Taylor nodded, not really sure where this was going.

“But Gadget and Dragon don’t exist in a vacuum, and people exist in various states between them. We have information on your process, you did tell the Director and your parents about how you made things. Let me ask you something, do you remember forging the metal for your weapons? Because, as far as you told us, you didn’t have a forge. How did you shape your metal?”

Taylor froze. She opened her mouth to reply, shut it with a click. Her brain buckled for a moment, confusion warring against sudden panic. How _had_ she? She’d just, put things together, right? But, looking at it, there were _blanks_ , she couldn’t remember how she’d put them together. She didn’t have a forge, how had she done welding, _how had she done everything, what else wasn’t she—_

Fingers snapped inches from her face, causing her to jerk back. Her breathing was heavy.

“Sorry, Volley,” Melissa said, sounding genuinely concerned. “Your best bet is to not focus on the inconsistencies. I’ll explain it now, if you’re okay with that?”

Taylor nodded. Anything but to focus on the fact that _there were gaps_.

“Okay, so, when it comes to Tinkers, Dragon has to make every tool she uses to put things together. There’s some correlation, as observed through cameras, between the level you are on the fugue scale and the tools you need to do things. Gadget, for example, may have some tools, but he might not have a forge, like you, and he might not have a welder, also like you. Instead, if we were to film his creation process, we would notice him bending metal seamlessly with his hands, causing two pieces of metal to fuse together perfectly, things you don’t remember doing yourself. This is _normal_ , we don’t advertise it because a lot of the time people can’t wrap their heads around it, but Tinkers do these sorts of things. Generally it happens when you lack the tools to do something, though for some they may need to make them anyway. In your instance, the metal you retrieved and used for your equipment, at some point your power took over for a few seconds and shifted things around, fused things together, made it work when it wouldn't have without a welder. For some reason, every part of this process is obfuscated from the Tinker, you are never aware of it happening _until you are told_ , and you’ll likely begin to forget about it shortly after leaving this room.”

That was... a lot, but a lot of something she could understand. Taking in deep breaths, Taylor nodded.

“Your power compensated for the lack of your tools, and it’s likely done so for other things as well, small bits and pieces, things you might not remember. If Dragon is a 1 on the scale, and Gadget is a 10, you are about a 2.5, or maybe a 3. You are clearly aware of your building process, you don’t have those glaring gaps in memories that, for Gadget, are something he would be aware of, but you do forget about certain things to help expedite your building process.”

Taylor breathed out. It was normal, okay, that was fine, it was normal. She was still herself, she wasn’t piloting a body, the last remnants of a broken girl without a way to know. She was okay. She was _fine_.

“Now, moving forward, let's talk about something less startling. More simple questions, okay Volley?”

Again, Taylor nodded.

“Right, if you had the resources, could you make yourself a high-tech screwdriver?”

The idea fluttered into the forefront of her mind, intrusive and almost schizophrenic. “Yes.”

“Right, so, what about something like a forge?”

Again, it came easy, as easy as any projectile she had made. It would need a good power source to work, but she could already see the vaguely alien roundness to it. “Yes.”

“A generator?”

That one came less easy, almost reluctantly, sticking to the film of her brain before it was pried away and fluttered into the forefront of her consciousness. It would be rougher than her normal stuff, but not as rough as her exoskeleton had, or the attempts at armour. “Yes.”

“So that makes you at least a type-1 for tinkering,” Melissa explained, unprompted. “Basically, when it comes to tinkertech, for most Tinkers - exceptions _always_ apply - the tech can be broken down into three categories: toolkit, specialized, and tertiary. Toolkit tech comes in two flavours for most, either type-1, being Tinkers who can think up and create high-tech tools to help aid them in their creation process, or type-2 Tinkers, who can only create their tools in response to required needs for their tech. An example would be needing a specific type of forge to make the metal for a set of power armour, they could create a forge then, but not preemptively. Specialized tech is what your focus is, in your case projectiles, and tertiary tech is stuff that still technically qualifies as tinkertech, but may be poorly made in comparison, things you can make, but only just.”

“At least?” Taylor baited, getting a raised eyebrow from Melissa.

“Yes, _at least_. I’m going to ask you to lean your head back and get comfortable, I want you to close your eyes if you have to, but if you don’t that’s fine too. I want you to think up a basic creation, one of your specialized gear, a dart, maybe, or a spear, and I want you to focus on that.” Melissa explained, Taylor doing as she asked, shifting the rubix cube around in her hands, shutting her eyes, drawing on that lingering idea for a sedative dart she had ended up thinking about on the way over.

“Now, I want you to tell me what tools you would need to make that.”

Almost instantly something clicked, the train of thought shifting the focus. Other ideas flushed against her brain, eager and giddy, but shoddy, quick fixes, things she could put together with a bit of metal, quick ways to get the tools she needed before she could work on them later. “A hammer with impact absorption, a chemistry set that can withstand high concentrated acid, a screwdriver I think I can make if I just get my hands on a—”

Another snap of the fingers jarred her out of it, the ideas fleeing her mind as quickly as they came. Taylor blinked blearily, not entirely sure where she was for a few moments, her fingers flexing and twisting the rubix cube, which almost looked done. Huh.

“So also a type-2, but maybe one more focused on making things as you need them.” Melissa wrote something down, probably what she just said. “Also, when was the last time you tinkered?”

Thinking was a bit difficult, but she did find her answer. “A week and a bit?” She mumbled, not quite sure.

“How frequently did you tinker before you joined the Wards?”

“Daily, I guess.”

Melissa pursed her lips. “I’m just glad we didn’t put back this meeting, in that case. You need some time in a workshop, you just about nearly tried to take apart the Rubix cube in your hand for parts.”

Staring down at it, Taylor let out a quiet “ _oh_ ”. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, we seriously have replacements.”

Taylor found a sheepish smile surging to her features, Melissa tittering a bit, a soft laugh. “Honestly, don’t worry so much about it. You’ll get access to a workshop before the day’s over, though I do think we still need to work through some other mental exercises to see if you can make a few things that are generally common among combat-focused Tinkers.”

Finding her rhythm again, Taylor clicked the sides around on the cube in her hand, managing to finish the puzzle off shortly after. “Do you have an example?”

“Well, how does your power feel about armour?”

* * *

The IVR building was reinforced. That was about the best thing to say about it, it was built like it was intended to survive a nuclear blast and for probably a good reason. The rest of the conversation and mental exercises about her Tinker power had been easy if disappointing. No, she couldn’t make power armor, no, she couldn’t really make shields, though she could make sharp discs which she just somehow knew would shatter like a dinner plate if she tried to block anything with them. No, she couldn’t make a vehicle, though she did find she could _maybe_ make a projectile missile that someone could be stuffed into, just, y’know, it would be lethal for them, and very hard for her to throw.

The space they’d given her was isolated, though she had heard the bang and screech of someone making something when she passed down the hallway to her wing for the immediate future. All told, her space was set up into three rooms: her bedroom, which was a single bed, cabinet, and light, as well as some outlets to charge her phone with, the next was the bathroom, which was connected directly to her bedroom, and finally, at the end of a short hallway, was her workshop, about the size of your average family’s garage and absolutely stacked to the roof with resources and plans and ideas and _tools_.

The rules for IVR testing were simple if short. You couldn’t make things that would endanger large areas - so no plagues, no self-replicating nanobots, that sort of thing - or destroy an extremely large region. You couldn’t make things which would leave behind any form of fallout, or be at risk of starting off a natural disaster. There were a few others, but basically the rule was ‘make it lethal, but keep it low-scale’, which she could understand.

What she couldn’t understand was her apprehension. It was close to seven o’clock now, she’d taken a shower, changed out of her sweats and into identical ones, had eaten. She was ready to Tinker, ready to get ready and see what she could make after a week of being held back, and... yet she couldn’t bring herself to enter the workshop again. She was standing at the door, feeling like the world might fall out from under her, nervous and skittish and... just, not ready for this.

She should call Sophia, text someone, _talk_ , but... then she couldn’t, could she? NDAs were a thing and if they found out about it she’d have her phone taken away and probably be legally reprimanded. She couldn’t do it, but she had to do _something_. Had to build something which would kill - _just like Hookwolf_ \- something that they’d test to see how _powerful_ it was, to get a reading on her, to see what she could do if pushed to her limits, if pushed off the ledge she had just barely managed to grasp on her way down.

She felt lost, adrift, and yet felt the gnawing _need_ to build grow in her stomach, in her brain. She already had a general idea of what she was going to build, how she was going to build it, it pushed at the roof of her skull like a scream in the back of her throat and it was gaining on her apprehension, on her nervousness.

She wasn’t sure what gave first, honestly, her own patience for her bullshit or the apprehension but before she really knew what she was doing she was pushing the door open, stepping through and into the workshop, taking in the things she could make - _the people she could kill_ \- and feeling her head go unpleasantly empty. She wasn’t out of her skin quite yet, but she didn’t really feel wholly _there_ either, like she was a step removed, delayed. It was ugly in its familiarity. She felt mechanical as she walked around the resources, plucking metal from the pile, feeling warmth begin to spread into her chest as the idea burned and _burned and burned_ away at her nervousness.

 _This will make me safe_ , something whispered, the thought like a guttered flame, sputtering but not dead. She couldn’t bring herself to disagree, but it still felt _wrong_.

She noticed the quality of the resources, things she never imagined handling. High-grade things, powerful things, and the scope of her goal widened. Flashes of what she would need to build to throw and carry the thing burned in her brain, and her motions changed track, away went the long length of metal she was going to forge and out came the smaller pieces, ready to be heated and shaped into a form that would make a new exoskeleton, bloated and clunky and too large by half but enough to give her the strength to throw it.

The idea took full scope, settled into the pit of her brain, all but whispered _look how safe I will make you_ into her ear. She felt her breath quicken, felt herself tighten, her focus flickering, coming back seconds later. Something burned behind her eyes, but she pushed it aside, ignored the dull ache, the acid in her veins. She would be _safe_ with this, it would be perfect, and it would hollow her out.

For some reason, she didn’t care. She needed safety because she was _there_ again, a fenced-in location with people who have odd goals, ones that could be harmful, who asked invasive questions and upended old wounds. She wasn’t safe here, _wasn’t safe anywhere_ , wouldn’t ever be until she built this, because if she did, she would be safe, surely, she had to be safe, it would make so much sense if _this was just what she was missing_.

Yes, that was right.

Why had she stopped tinkering to begin with? It was hard to remember.

* * *

“Holy shit kid.”

Blinking up blearily, Taylor canted her head to one side, staring at the frazzled appearance of Melissa. She had a coffee cup in one hand, which was weird because it was... looking at the window, morning. Blinking again, Taylor moved her arm and nearly put it through the concrete on the ground, large metal pistons welded haphazardly together, shifting with audible hisses, connected to her arms by thick bands of metal. On the ground in front of her, a spear of frankly unimaginable length stared back up at her, and the memories came in slowly, clicked. Right, she had made this, she needed to be safe, so she made it.

She felt like her body was empty, hollow, a cast-away shell from a bug which had long squirmed its way into a metamorphosis. She remembered to blink again, slow and methodological, and glanced back up at Melissa, who had extended a bottle of water in her direction.

Taking it, Taylor somehow managed to rip the cap off without tearing the bottle in half and took a few sips, the rush of liquid on her tongue informing her just how fuzzy her head was, how dry her tongue and gums were. She ended up draining the entire thing.

“It’s like five in the afternoon, I came for a check-up because nobody had seen you come out for breakfast or lunch. Did you ever stop building?”

Taylor tried to remember, came up empty. “I don’t think so.”

“Is that, well, finished?” Melissa asked curiously, glancing down at what was easily six meters of tinkertech spear.

That she was more sure of. “Yes. So are the arms needed to throw it.” Her voice was odd, dull, flat. She tried to feel a whole lot about it but found nothing. It felt like she had hollowed herself out, filled the spear up with who she normally was.

Melissa blinked. “Jeez, that’s like... twenty-two hours for that?”

“Dunno,” Taylor repeated.

“Well, what does it do?”

Tilting her head, Taylor remembered to blink again. “When I was like, ten or eleven, there was this huge scare about rods from god. Even our social studies teacher had us do a discussion about it, like children would know how to fix something adults didn’t. The reason why it became a thing was because of the Simurgh, because some PRT official slipped up and openly admitted to being afraid that the Simurgh would use her ability to seamlessly transition into orbit around the planet to drag some scrap up with her before dropping it on key targets. I kinda forgot about the Simurgh in that equation for a while, but I never forgot about the idea of a rod from god.”

Melissa blanched. “Please tell me this can’t reach orbit.”

“It can’t,” Taylor conceded, voice still pitchless. “But it can imitate the function of a rod from god.”

“Is it even safe to deploy?”

“As long as we’re not within fifty meters of it.”

Melissa swallowed audibly. “...Alright, fine. We have space for that. Shit, kid. I’ll go get permission, they’ll probably want you to work this through as soon as they can. Maybe try eating something?”

“I can’t take the exo-arms off unless I want to risk them recalibrating wrongly, I don’t have detailed control over my grip strength with them on.”

That got a sigh. “Goddamn I should’ve put it off and just made you start _tomorrow_ , had someone there for you to talk to since you’re clearly not okay.”

“I feel perfectly fine.” That was a lie, she didn’t really feel _anything_ , just kinda... empty.

Melissa said nothing but flashed what seemed like an attempt at a smile, though it came out as a grimace. She was gone shortly after, though Taylor didn’t really see her leave, her eyes slid off of things too easily, it was hard to focus on anything at once. Her head spun, topsy-turvy and rather unpleasant.

Staggering to her feet, Taylor hefted the sarissa - that’s what she had come to call it, it did about equal it in size - and held it horizontally, walking carefully around the mess she had left at the workbench. She stared down at it, tried to drum up memories from the night before, found herself blank and empty, felt her eyes shutter and go vacant. Her eyes slipped from the bench to the floor, and she directed them back up, only for them to slip off like the world itself was slippery. Her focus felt torn a hundred ways, she tried again, tried to think of that night and tried to focus on anything that wasn’t the dull, achingly _empty_ feeling in her head and—

“Volley?”

Turning back around, Taylor forced herself to blink, eyes dry. Melissa and a handful of others stood at the door, some looking at her warily, others with anticipation. “The field’s yours,” Melissa clarified after another moment. “You ready?”

“Yes,” she lied.

Getting to the field was less and more difficult than she thought. She clutched her spear to herself, the only grounding thing she had, regardless of how many times the others tried to take it from her. She was pretty sure without her exo-arms they’d need ten people to even lift the thing, but she only needed herself. It was safe, but safe like a knife was safe, a double-edged sort of thing, like how fire is both warmth and horrendously dangerous.

The field they took her to was at the far back, a flat grassy plain, muddy browns crunching around her shoes as they stood. There was a small staircase recessed into the ground that the researchers were filing into, with the only part of the building she could see above the ground being a length of glass that presumably acted as a way to observe it happening.

“How long will it take for the spear to hit the ground?” Melissa asked, having not gone with the rest of them.

Taylor remembered to blink. “Forty-five seconds?”

“Can you throw it from here to a place far enough that it won’t impact the bunker?”

“I think so.”

“Then I’ll be waiting at the door, okay? The moment you throw that you rush towards the stairs and get in here so you can be safe from any even small chance of debris. Okay, Volley?” There was something painful in her voice, something that made the numbness in her chest flicker and writhe.

“Yeah,” Taylor echoed, not enjoying the croak in her voice.

Another blink, Melissa was out of sight.

Sliding the sarissa into her hands, Taylor didn’t ignore her Thinker power, felt it slam into the forefront of her mind. She saw how far it would go, saw the distance she could get it, and adjusted. Tried to think about how she threw it, holding it like a pole vault but without the intent to use it to push herself up. It was hard and awkward, and she ended up holding it to the side, with both hands wrapped around it as the servos creaked, groaned, shuddered beneath the weight.

She took a step back, another, a third, then stepped forward in a rapid burst. Her servos screamed, the left one shattered, shards cutting into her skin, but she threw it. Six meters of metal and weight and _tech_ got about ten feet off the ground before the bottom burner erupted, a deafening noise that reminded her she had to run towards the stairs. She let her eyes linger on the spear as it ascended rapidly, as the first stage was detached, sending chunks of metal to the ground, before turning and making her way to the stairs, Melissa hissing when she caught sight of the wound on her arm, saying something to someone, a hand reaching out to grab her before she flinched back against a blast door that had apparently already shut, the person in front of her - she didn’t have a name to his face - holding his hands up wordlessly, in one hand being a roll of bandages.

She felt the warm, runny copper growing gooey in the fabric of her sweatshirt.

“Don’t touch me,” she croaked out. “Don’t grab my body, just, wrap it. Keep your distance.”

The guy did as he was told, wrapping her gently over the sweatshirt. The pain was grounding, drawing her in, she could feel her fingers and her head and the numbness was pulling away into a raw emotional _ache_ that made her want to hit things, to scream. Her mind was muddled, she was _so tired_ but simultaneously lighting up with energy, unable to focus for longer than a few seconds. She would blink and things would change, people would be out of place, conversations would skip forward like a dodgy record player.

“Confirming descent,” someone said, people huddled around the window. There was a dull whistling, then a shudder, the earth rocking slightly beneath her feet, a deafening blast of noise.

She blinked, Melissa was at her side.

“I want to go home,” she said, instead of the intended _how did I do_.

Melissa didn’t smile, didn’t grimace, just looked at her with something unreadable. Something sad. “You’ll be home before the night is done.”

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Taylor hadn’t texted.

Sophia stared up at the ceiling of her room with a sort of muted focus, trying not to feel anything about that fact. It had been over a day since Taylor had left, and not once had she messaged her in any way.

It was worrying. Taylor was a rabid text monster, speaking in tongues and acting generally belligerent whenever she had the chance. It was apparently no different with Emma, who had at some point learned how to filter through Taylor’s shit excuse for grammar and understand the underlying concepts beneath it. Sophia, personally, hadn’t put nearly as much effort into it and deciphered what she could, but the fact that she hadn’t, that there had been radio silence, was bothering her. Viscerally.

Rationally, Sophia did know that she could be there for three days, but... emotionally, well, it was different. Maybe she had assumed wrongly that Taylor would have enough _time_ to text her, but it had been basically all of yesterday - starting with one last ‘ttyl’ at about eight o’clock - and now, nearly seven in the evening, there hadn’t been one text back. Was it her? Was Taylor just... caught _up_ in something? Or whatever?

Ugh.

Reaching for her phone, Sophia nearly dropped it when the sound of a text pinged. For a moment, she really did think it was Taylor, it would really fit if that bitch was also psychic or some shit, but instead it was Emma, and that was just as fucking good mind you, but, well, the text didn’t help.

> _Did Taylor text you?_

She hadn’t even texted Emma. That was... bad. Really bad. Emma was effectively Taylor’s safety blanket.

> _No. Call me?_

The phone rang a few seconds later. “ _She hasn’t texted me, and I texted her a few times_ ,” Emma’s voice was clear over the line, sounding breathless and almost upset. “ _What if something happened to her again? You have no idea, she’s fragile Sophia, I know she’s gone for testing but—_ ”

“Emma,” Sophia interrupted, trying to inject as much gentleness into her voice as she could manage. “Calm down, she’s with the PRT, I would _know_ if someone attacked the convoy or something.”

There was a wet sniffle. “ _Are you sure?_ ”

Unless they wanted her to leave the Wards, they _fucking_ would tell her. “Yes.”

“ _Okay_ ,” Emma whispered, voice calming down, her breathing evening out.

There was a short moment of silence where Sophia just let herself listen to Emma’s breathing, the soft puffs of air, could almost imagine the way her breath ghosted over her skin—no, she was not going there. Not tonight, not in _this_ headspace.

“ _I can’t lose her again,_ ” Emma said, voice a bit more sure, but still quavering. “ _Going silent like this, it scares me. It reminds me of what Brent did to her, isolated her, locked her away. I lost so much when she left, I... I don’t think I can handle it if it happens again_.”

Sophia just hummed.

“ _I don’t channel my feelings well most of the time. I’m a mess, I’m easily hysterical, I’m reliant, but if I’m proud of anything, it was what I did to Brent. Once I found out I used all of my clout, every last ounce of it, to ruin his life. He’s a pariah even among the other fucking nazis he has to hang out with now. People hate him, Soph, everyone but his close family ridicules him, I have a network of rumours I keep spread, will keep spreading until he’s far, far fucking away_.”

Sometimes Emma really did scare her, but weirdly in a good way? Personally, if Sophia had been in that position, a good, visceral beating would probably be her avenue of punishment, but... well, whatever floats Emma’s boat, y’know?

“ _Taylor still had to find an excuse to break up with him, though,_ ” she whispered hoarsely. “ _Brent had her mind twisted around in so many knots, she felt dependent on him, couldn’t bring herself to just ghost him. So I got a big rumour about him without telling her that he was cheating on her. It wasn’t hard, really, he probably was, he’s just that type of person, he likes control over others like that, likes having options. I got her to leave him, thank god, but... but, sometimes I’m so afraid that she’ll go back to him._ ”

“She won’t,” Sophia said simply, staring up at the ceiling.

Emma sucked in a breath. “ _How can you be so sure?_ ”

Sophia shut her eyes. “I just know, Emma.”


	21. B-TRACK 2.6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor talks to someone, Sophia reconnects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for a non-consensual kiss done in a self-destructive spiral.
> 
> Thank you to Tempestuous for looking over this chapter as well.

Rolling her shoulder, Taylor tried to ignore the feeling of the bandages pulling against the skin of her bicep. It was distracting, stretchy fabric wrinkling and unwrinkling, bunching up against the clothes she had changed into after her mother had helped her out of the stuff she’d worn for testing. She didn’t really remember much of that night, just that she’d arrived home with a bandaged, bleeding arm and had really worried her parents for the second time in less than two weeks. She’d slept somewhere in there, a handful of hours of dozing in and out of focus, before her PRT-issued phone had bleeped and she had been called in again.

Not for anything like a patrol or an emergency, oh no. Therapy. Originally they had intended to get her set up with the therapist rotating in and out next week, apparently to evaluate if they could go through with her debut in good conscience, but after whatever they recorded at the testing range it had been pushed ahead. Dad hadn’t been impressed, nor had her mother, when she’d come down and told them, but something in their faces had said for all that they weren’t _impressed_ , they were more than worried enough to go along with it.

So, here she was now; sitting on a bench in a hallway somewhere in the depths of the PRT HQ at eight forty five in the morning. She hadn’t called Sophia yet, hadn’t texted Emma - even though there was a litany of texts _to_ her - and felt all-around too raw to be dealing with any of this shit. She almost wanted to slip out of her skin; the world was too bright, the air scraped against her skin like tiny razor blades, and every stare made her want to recoil and lash out in equal measure.

The only saving grace was that the PRT building was mostly empty. She had also come in a domino mask, so while the weight of those gazes wasn’t _lifted_ per se, it was offset. It was easier for people to be staring at _Volley_ than it was for them to be staring at _Taylor Hebert_ right about now, if she was going to be honest.

Glancing down at her hands, Taylor clenched and relaxed her fingers, watched as skin stretched taut over joints, carefully noted the callouses on the pads of her digits. She blinked slowly, sucked in a low breath and tried to hold it, tried to feel anything but achingly _present_ , so hyper-aware of her surroundings that it almost chafed. She hadn’t been like this in a long time, not since she last needed to be aware of everything, if only for her own safety.

She was getting worse.

People, just from what she’d absorbed through the internet and television, seemed to have a pretty odd view that people like her weren’t aware that they were the way they were. For all that she was good at self-delusion - and boy was she ever - it wasn’t like she wasn’t _aware_ that her behaviour was unusual. It wasn’t like she thought flinching at every close pass of a person was _normal_.

It was hard to explain the sensation in full, honestly. It wasn’t like she had stepped out of her skin, the disconnect wasn’t that strong, it was more that she had pulled away from herself, was an observer to the churning cogs of her own mind. Almost as though there were three pieces of herself: her emotions, the rational part of her mind, and her as a consciousness, or an observer, an eye that was looking down on something she shouldn’t be seeing and experiencing at the same time.

The door in front of her clicked, creaked open. Taylor blinked away the thoughts swirling in her skull, canted her head up and caught her first sight of the therapist she’d be seeing for the next hour and a half. She was of average height, maybe five-six or five-seven, with light brown skin and straight, incredibly dark-black hair that she had folded over one shoulder, long enough that it reached just below her chest. She was built stockily, with some curves but an underlying sturdiness that made Taylor think of old tree trunks.

“Volley, right?” The woman said, her voice tinged with a long-faded Australian accent.

Taylor found herself nodding, words stubbornly refusing to surface.

The woman smiled, dark eyes crinkling with warmth. “It’s good to meet you. I am Doctor Anisa Hartaputri. Would you like to come in?”

Dr. Hartaputri was being careful, some numb part of Taylor noticed. She probably had every right to be, but something about how gentle she was being about the entire situation made her want to grit her teeth, straighten her spine and bristle. She just didn’t really have the energy for it, not physically or mentally, and instead just nodded again, climbing to her feet to follow after the shrink.

The office they had Dr. Hartaputri in was visibly transient. It had all the makings of a therapist’s office, of course, warm orange-coloured walls to contrast the bright clinical white walls of the corridor outside of it, a dark red carpet, bookcases, a leather loveseat, a stained wood desk with a computer tucked away on it. Plants had been placed on top of shelves, and one spider vine in particular hung from a chain just in front of the window, soaking up the light from the clear skies outside.

But none of these things were _filled_. It stuck out that the room was _too_ well put together, the bookcases were empty for all but a few shelves, there was no sign of it being lived in, no knick-knacks or personal belongings. The walls were barren, and Dr. Hartaputri maneuvered around the plants in a way that implied she didn’t want to be near them or particularly responsible for them, but had no way to remove them from the space. This was not a place Dr. Hartaputri owned, it was a place she was renting, _existing in_ for the time being, but not for any longer than she had to be.

“Please take a seat,” Dr. Hartaputri said smoothly, waving a hand towards the leather loveseat that had been crammed between the right wall and a bookcase, just next to the door they entered through. Taylor did as she asked, tried to shove the odd feeling that she didn’t really _belong_ in the room - that nobody did, not even the doctor herself - and settled down into the soft embrace of the leather cushions. It smelled new, felt new and stiff, not quite broken into.

“Is this a new office?” Taylor managed to ask, her voice raspier than she’d expected.

Dr. Hartaputri swivelled her computer chair around, staring at her for a few moments. “No, the office isn’t. I am though, this is my first time being rotated to Brockton.”

Rotated? “Did someone quit?”

“No,” Dr. Hartaputri said, sounding a touch careful. “It’s just that therapists can’t stay with any one branch for very long due to security concerns.”

Oh. So that was why. That was... difficult to wrap her head around, yes, but not impossible. Swallowing dryly, Taylor kept the indecision off her face, or at least tried to, if the the way the slight raise in Dr. Hartaputri’s eyebrow was any indication.

“So, to begin with, let's talk about confidentiality. Anything you tell me is confidential to me and any of your other therapists, unless specified otherwise. I will have to disclose certain things in the event you say you are going to hurt yourself, another person, commit a crime, or if there is an audit of some kind,” Dr. Hartaputri explained smoothly, like she had gone through this exact process several times before. She very well might’ve, now that Taylor thought about it. “I was given some information about your history, and I am aware of your civilian identity. You may choose what you want me to call you. I’m of the personal opinion the comfort of the patient going into things is more important in matters like these, in large part because of how we have to approach issues due to the limited timeframe we’re working with.”

Taylor didn’t need to think much about it. “Volley,” she said, forcing her fingers not to tangle together, ignoring the urge to fidget and twitch. “Please call me that.”

Dr. Hartaputri smiled gently. “Of course, Volley.”

In the absence of Taylor saying anything, the room grew quiet. The faint sound of birdsong was just barely audible, so faint she had to strain to hear it over the dull ringing in her ears that crept in every time the world went too quiet, like her brain was trying so hard to hear something it was overcompensating.

“I heard you had a rough couple of days,” Dr. Hartaputri began slowly, folding one leg over the other, her hands in her lap, completely non-threatening even when the words she spoke made Taylor’s skin crawl with half-remembered memories. “We have to start somewhere, so how about that? You can talk about something that took place at the testing facility and we can work our way to the problem, if you would like.”

She didn’t _like_ it, she didn’t want to be here, she wanted to curl up in her blankets and pretend the world didn’t exist, wanted to blot out the staggered, disconnected memories she could recall from the last two days, wanted to forget about flinching away from her mother’s attempt to touch her shoulder when she arrived home. She wanted to forget about a lot, wanted to sandpaper it from her mind, but that wasn’t how the world really worked, was it?

No, she _had_ to talk, had to _explain_ , had to drag fingers over scabbed wounds and reopen them, bleed herself dry over someone who didn’t know her, would have to move on without her. But, then, that was part of the appeal, wasn’t it? Dr. Hartaputri _didn’t_ know her, knew nothing about her, only what her file said, she was an outside observer, someone entirely disconnected to the problems rooted into Brockton, into her.

Taylor had to stop her knees from pulling up towards her chest, folding one foot over the other and clenching her thighs. She splayed her fingers over each knee, took in a long breath and let it out, tried to imagine the currents of air clearing her mind, tried to find her center, her foundation, however shaky it might be.

“I didn’t feel safe.” It _hurt_ , she didn’t want to do this but forced the words out anyway; shut her eyes and clenched her fingers down on her knees until she wondered if she had broken her skin through the denim of her jeans. “They wanted my bag, and then they poked and prodded at me, and then they showed me I had gaps in my memories from where my powers just, _took over_ , to do things I couldn’t. Then, then, I... I had to build something, and all I could think about was—” _that I needed to be safe_.

Words stopped, clogged in her throat. She hunched a bit forward, choking on her own _fucking uselessness_.

“Volley, you’re allowed to take your time,” Dr. Hartaputri said gently, Taylor glancing up to meet her warm, warm eyes, so gentle, conveying an intent to help, to heal. She almost hated her for it. “It takes a lot to talk about problems like these, that’s strength that _you_ have.”

Strength? If she was angrier, she might’ve screamed. “No it isn’t.”

Dr. Hartaputri’s eyes focused on her. “Then what is it?” She asked, no sign of a ploy in her voice, just a simple voiced question, wrapped in honesty.

“It’s _weakness_ ,” she spat the last word out with more vitriol than she’d intended to, the anger swimming in her chest, hatred tightening into her throat, boiling away like rancid pitch. “I’m _weak_ , I can’t even _fucking_ talk.”

“Why do you think that?”

The wire in her chest pulled tighter. “Because it’s _true_.”

“I don’t know, Volley,” Dr. Hartaputri rebuffed, voice still so _gentle_ , so warm like she wasn’t arguing about _the reality_ of the world. “I know plenty of people who have been hurt, I wouldn’t consider them to be weak.”

It snapped. “ _They_ might not be!” she barked back, just shy of a yell. “But _I am_!”

Dr. Hartaputri remained frustratingly unruffled. “Why is that?”

Taylor opened her mouth, let the words come, and found that she couldn’t stop them.

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

The Wards area was blessedly empty by the time she had gotten back from her joint patrol with Dauntless. It hadn’t been a particularly exciting patrol, just a few fights to break up, a few drunks to point on their way home. The riots had died down significantly with the reinforcements, they were even thinking about reopening school in about three days, a Wednesday. Not that she was particularly excited to go back to the shithole that was Winslow, but frankly to a certain degree it beat sitting around doing sweet fuck all until she got called in to shoot tranquillizers at neo-nazis, not that she wasn’t fond of the latter exercise.

Discarding her mask on the table, Sophia unbuttoned her wrist-mounted crossbows, dumping them along with it. Next went the gloves, which were stuffy as fuck, also tossed haphazardly onto the pile that included her mask and crossbows, finally letting her roll the fabric of her costume’s sleeves up to her elbows, a breathy sigh escaping her in relief as finally, _finally_ , her arms were free of their stuffy confines. It wasn’t often that she regretted her decision to push for the edgy goth hero schtick as a kid, doing so had given her liberties more classically branded people like Missy and Chris lacked, but this was definitely one of them. Breathable costumes, even light-coloured ones, seemed like a better alternative than getting sweaty and sticky in something that trapped all that heat beneath pitch-black fabric and leather.

Stretching her arms above her head, Sophia yawned, arching her back as far as it could go, working to untense the clusters of muscle along her back, the strained feeling fading back into an ache that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. A good workout was one of her favourite things, got the hormones swirling around in her brain, gave the twitchy energy that filled her body someplace to go when it would otherwise build up in her legs and arms like some sort of restless beast, never letting her just relax in peace.

Fishing around in her mind for this week’s patrol schedule, Sophia rolled her head around, grunting. Dennis and... she was pretty sure Missy were on the next patrol in about an hour. She’d get out of dodge by then, but not having to go immediately home was a nice alternative, even if there was sweet fuck all to do here. Her house was just getting a little claustrophobic, too familiar, she had been stuck at home for basically all times outside of her patrols and any moment she could steal away to get away from the house. She loved her home, sure, it was safe, and it had everyone she wanted to _keep_ safe in it, but fuck her if it didn’t start feeling like a cage sometimes.

The click of the Wards door opening - without an alarm, which meant a Ward who was on their own - Sophia paused, in the middle of raising her leg to prop her shoes up against the table, and twisted her body around to look for whoever was coming in early. Missy would make sense, her home life was a garbage fire from the bits and pieces Sophia had been told, and Chris could easily be coming in to get started on trying to finish something he had been mulling over for close to a month now, not that Sophia had any idea what it was.

Rather than either a short preteen girl or a gawky, hesitant, if calm and gentle sort of guy, Taylor was the one who passed through the opening, and not for the first time, the only thing Sophia could really say about her was that she looked like shit. Her eyes were visibly red-rimmed, her entire stance screamed _skittish_ and _paranoid_ , the way she glanced around, the way her hands worked into fists at her side before relaxing only enough to look like claws. It was the way she walked, always ready to turn and sprint away, the way every muscle in her body looked tense, ready to cramp and curl into itself like a hedgehog.

Their gazes met. Taylor slowly blinked as though she was trying to work something out of her eye.

Rallying her patience, Sophia just barely managed to avoid yelling at her for leaving Emma - and to a degree, herself - worried out of their _fucking minds_ because she had returned home and texted neither of them. “Hey, Taylor.”

Taylor swallowed, wavered. “Hi,” she mumbled back, tone contrasting the sheer intensity she was staring at her with.

Rising to her feet, Sophia shuffled around the couch, standing in front of her. “You look like shit,” she said bluntly.

Taylor shrugged, remained silent.

Sophia felt her anger flare. “Why didn’t you text Emma or me?”

Visibly swallowing, she refused to meet her eye. “Dunno.”

Right, there went her patience. “ _Taylor_ ,” she grit out, keeping as much of her frustration out of her voice as she could. “Emma is worried sick, are you just never going to text her again? Never _talk_ to her again?”

“Dunno,” she echoed, again. This time with something like vindictiveness in her voice, something bitter and _mean_.

“What the _fuck_?” Sophia snapped, breathing in, out, reminding herself of the reason _why_ she was angry, that lashing out would do nothing productive. “Seriously, Taylor, you’ll have to talk to one of us _eventually_.”

Taylor’s stance gradually unravelled, pulled itself upright, bristling just like her. She still carried that tense energy in her, like every muscle was cramping simultaneously, but no longer did it seem like she was one breath away from collapsing into herself like some sort of fucked up stellar event. “I _think_ ,” she hissed out with not a small amount of venom. “I am _done_ talking.”

“So, what?” Sophia barked back before she could think better of it. “You’re just going to cut her out again?”

Taylor shrugged, the motion harsh and jerky. “Maybe I will.”

“That’s not how _friendships_ work, Taylor,” Sophia snarled, stepping forward a pace.

“Yeah, well, I would know _a lot about that_ , wouldn’t I?”

She stepped forward again. “Taylor what the _fuck_ are yo—”

Then Taylor was kissing her. Her mind blanked for a short moment before her body caught up with it and she jerked away harshly, nearly stumbling back into the couch, her hands up, palms outstretched, trying to keep her away. There was anger there, hot and heady and ready to turn her body into a weapon, but she tamped down on it, tried to keep it close to her chest even as she felt it crawling up her throat. “ _What the fuck Taylor?!_ ”

Incredulity slid into Taylor’s expression first, her hands coming up to tangle with the curly black hair on her head, and then something just _crumpled_. It wasn’t like she deflated like a balloon, more like someone had ripped a hole in one, her body curling in on itself, dropping to the ground, a low scream of something not unlike pain pushing itself out of her lips, taking the shape of the words “ _why don’t you fucking hate me?_ ”

Sophia just stared, listening as Taylor’s breathing turned hitched, then into a whimper. Each breath was heavier, each one coming with another gasping wheeze, wet and thick, until finally it transitioned entirely into sharp, ruinous sobs.

“I just—I did that and you _did nothing!_ ” She screamed, loud and hurt and sounding not too dissimilar to a wounded animal. “I just did something awful, _why aren’t you hurting me for it?! Hate me! Hurt me! Do fucking something!_ ”

...Oh.

Sophia felt the anger transition into something else, twist her throat into a heavy, weighted knot. She breathed in, felt the heaviness in her chest, and breathed out, the swirl of emotions growing blunter, less sharp, less ready to hurt.

“That wasn’t okay,” Sophia found herself saying.

Taylor shuddered, choked on her own tears. “I know,” she got out, voice hoarse.

“Then why did you do it?”

“Because it was the only way I knew how to push you away, how to get you to hate me.”

Sophia shut her eyes, something like fatigue rushing across the surface of her brain. “Why?”

“I like you,” was the answer, whispered almost in a panic.

She kept her eyes shut, reaching up to brush calloused fingertips over each lid. “I’ve known for a while, Taylor.”

“ _I don’t want to like you_.”

She could imagine why.

“I can’t, I _can’t_ like people. I’m ruined, I’m _weak_ you have to understand I’m _so fucking weak and I keep having to reopen these fucking wounds and I just—_ ” Her words ended in another sob, high and reedy, almost a keen. “Please hate me.”

Taylor had just overstepped boundaries, done something that, if anyone else had, Sophia would be rubbing the paste she had made out of their face into the metal floor tiles by this point. But, then, that was the point, wasn’t it? Taylor, curled up into a ball, knees on either side of her head, hands in her hair, crouched on the floor like a broken, jagged animal. She wanted that, wanted a clean break, wanted to be hurt and pushed away.

“I can’t,” Sophia said, and found that she wasn’t lying. She was upset she overstepped boundaries, yes, but even that was fading into the background noise that had come to be the part of her brain that handled Taylor, that was almost reserved for her.

“ _Please_ ,” she sobbed out, sounding on the edge of panic. “Please, pleasepleaseplease _please_.”

Crouching down, Sophia made a shushing noise, the sort of noise she’d made towards Paula when she was having a bad day. She combed her fingers into Taylor’s hair, hushed her again when another sob rose, high and harsh, and the pleading continued. Taylor rocked back and forth on her heels, short, high noises of pain and hurt bubbling out from between her lips, growing fainter and fainter as Sophia just crouched there, told her it would be okay, and found that she couldn’t really bring herself to think of it as a lie.


	22. B-TRACK 2.7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor copes, Sophia listens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for the depiction of a panic attack.
> 
> Thank you so much to Lyrisey for help on this.

Her eyes ached, the low and distant throb of overuse. Taylor sucked in a slow breath, shuddered, fingers shaking as she tried to thread them through the denim of her jeans.

Dr. Hartaputri smiled at her sadly, sitting across from her in that plush seat of hers, unchanged from the visit not half an hour ago. “Do you want to talk about what just happened with Shadow Stalker?”

Her head felt empty, her body frail. She was worn out, dried up, withered. She slouched her spine, let her hands drop limp to her sides, not quite able to gather the energy to hold herself upright anymore.

“Yes,” she rasped, and it was somehow the truth.

* * *

Mom combed fingers through her hair, scratching at her scalp with her nails. It was a quiet evening, darker than the average from the clouds that had crept in over the day. Dad was still at the union building, would be for a few hours yet, but she didn’t mind his absence as much as she thought she would.

“We all have to start somewhere,” Mom reminded gently, her fingers smoothing across the crown of her skull. She caught a few times against tangles, sending a twinge of pain down her spine, not that she could work up the effort to complain about it. “We all make bad decisions, hon. You have to realize that. You’ll get better, and we’ll be with you for every step on the way.”

Taylor let her eyes flutter shut, felt the nails scrape across her scalp, curls pulled and smoothed out from the mess they had devolved into beneath her hands hours ago. Another drag of fingers through her hair, another tangle pulled free, painful but necessary, a rhythm she hadn’t shared with her mother in years, not since she had decided she was old enough to not need her mother anymore. She had been wrong, of course, but then her at twelve was rarely _right_ about anything in particular.

She had just been a stupid child.

She was starting to think that hadn’t really changed.

* * *

“Coffee?” Dr. Hartaputri offered, one bony hand circled over the receiver.

Taylor shook her head, glanced at the early specks of dawn peeking through the curtains of the office. It paradoxically felt like it had been both longer than a day since she had last been here and infinitely shorter. “No thanks,” she clarified after another moment, glancing back at Dr. Hartaputri, who smiled gently at her. She was only a little startled when the expression didn’t draw up any anger, any distaste.

Slotting the phone back into its rest, Dr. Hartraputri turned her full attention to Taylor, fingers lacing together in her lap, her eyes focused on her. “I think today we should talk about where we can go from here, alright?”

Taylor blinked slowly, breathed out quietly. “Yeah.”

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Taylor said, blocking out the feeling of eyes staring at her from all directions, forcing the urge to bristle down into her stomach. She knew nobody in the Wards outside of Sophia, had no reason to think any of them intended her ill-will, but was it ever difficult to get her mind - and for that matter, _body_ \- to acknowledge that. Even with her therapist waiting just outside the door, ready if things broke down, if _she_ broke down.

Sophia blinked up at her from the couch she was seated on, slow and languid. She pursed her mouth, and for a moment Taylor felt her stomach twist, crawl up into her throat, because she _was_ sorry, sorry for the boundaries she overstepped intentionally, sorry for the discomfort she inflicted on Sophia, sorry for _so,_ so very much. It would be her right to reject her, to turn her away in a snub, to lash out and do anything, but for what felt like the first time, she almost didn’t _want_ that.

“I forgive you,” Sophia finally said, her voice relaxed. “Just don’t do it again without my permission.”

And that was that.

* * *

“I don’t want to pressure you,” Dr. Hartaputri confided after a moment, one leg folded over the other. This would make the fourth meeting, the first two on Sunday, the third on Monday, and now the fourth on Tuesday. “But I do think we need to talk about the problem eventually. You go back to school tomorrow, right?”

Taylor shifted in her seat, feeling discomfort creep into her focus. For a moment, she almost bristled again, but managed to center herself, pull herself back from the unthinking defensiveness that she had learned to exist with. “Yeah, it’s only a half-day though.”

“We’ve spoken briefly about Brent before, can you tell me what plans you have in place to handle being back in the same environment as him?”

Keeping her fingers dutifully loose, not wanting to dig her nails into her skin, Taylor avoided looking the therapist in the eyes, instead opting to stare out the window. “He’s in his last year, he has a lot of studying to do, I think. We don’t belong to the same friend groups anymore either, so... I just avoid him.”

Dr. Hartaputri hummed slowly. “But you said you’re worried about that not lasting?”

Another pang of discomfort forced a reflexive twitch out of her legs.

“Yes,” she admitted very, very quietly, not enjoying the thrill of fear her honesty provoked. “It doesn’t fit his personality to do so.”

“Taylor,” she coaxed, and it still always felt a little disquieting to hear her real name spoken when in the mock-up costume they gave her. She had given Dr. Hartaputri permission to say her first name, spoken it in confidence after Volley had... had been too impersonal, had offloaded the therapy onto a mask that she wore, a repetition of the past, if less violent. “You’re allowed to feel upset or afraid that a past abuser will attempt to forcefully re-establish contact. We’ve spoken about this before, remember? Your feelings are valid.”

Something ugly churned in her stomach, an unpleasant cramp that made her want to puke. “My feelings never stopped him before,” she croaked, reaching up to rub at the ache behind her eyes.

“Which is why,” Dr. Hartaputri began confidently. “We develop strategies and countermeasures to handle these possibilities. Would you like to focus on that today?”

“Will it help make me feel more safe?” Oh, how much it had taken for her to admit that the first time.

Dr. Hartaputri smiled so, so very gently. “I should hope so.”

* * *

She was underwater, she could barely breathe, the world sounded muted and distant, thick against her ears, weighing down on her with a pressure that she couldn’t shoulder. She wasn’t breathing until she was, until digits were pressing into the low of her back and her breath forced itself out from between an achingly-clenched jaw, a jagged gasp, spittle wetting her lower lip. Nausea swelled, thick and knotted in her throat, and for a moment she thought she was going to puke until the fist of pressure dropped back down into her stomach like a chunk of lead.

“Shh, shh, honey. Breathe in, out.” Mom’s voice graced her ears, firm and loving and easy to follow.

“Breathe in, one, two, three, four... out, one, two, three, four.” She breathed in, out, forced her body to follow the new pattern. Her breath evened, oxygen clawed its way back into her head and with it came dizziness, the dense ball of nausea in her stomach diffusing, spreading out until it filled in every part of her body, sapping the strength from it, filling her head with static.

“There you are,” Mom murmured comfortingly, stroking steady circles on her back. “You’re at home, Taylor, it’s not long after dinner. We started talking about school and you became upset and then began to hyperventilate and had a panic attack. Your father’s getting one of the heavier comforters from our room.”

Taylor ran the hem of her sleeve over her bottom lip and chin, shuddering as it came away wet. Her cheeks were damp, her head spun, but she still managed to pay attention, even if only abstractly.

The broad, gentle palms of her father helped her to her feet, then to the couch. The blanket, blessedly heavy and smooth, coaxed itself around her shoulders, tucked itself beneath her chin. The television droned on in the background, turned to the nature channel and left quiet, the volume turned low.

“Why?” Taylor finally asked, Mom’s hand tensing on her shoulder before returning to smoothing gently over the fabric covering her back. “I was—I was never this bad about school before, even...” _with him_.

Mom hummed, a low note, but it wasn’t her who spoke.

“It’s because, little owl, healing hurts,” Dad said, something thunderous and protective rumbling in his chest.

Taylor cracked one eye open, her vision hazy and indistinct without her glasses. _Where had they gone, anyway?_

“You’re starting to realize just how _much_ Brent hurt you,” Dad continued, voice thick. “That’s part of healing, but it will get easier. I promise you.”

* * *

Staring up at Winslow, Taylor was struck at just how banal it was, how normal. It felt like it had been a long time since she had felt normal, but that clearly wasn’t the case, was it? It had been... what, a week or two? That wasn’t a lot of time, hadn’t ever been, yet it felt like decades ago. Decades since the protests, since she’d killed Hookwolf, since she had been healed and recruited and _gone to testing_.

“You okay?” Emma murmured, her fingertips brushing against the skin of her knuckles, not quite grabbing, just reminding her that she was there.

Taylor managed a nod. “I am.” She hadn’t disclosed too much about the therapy to anyone but her parents, not even to Emma or Sophia, but she knew that they were aware of it in some capacity. Sophia more so than Emma, in all likelihood, but not by much.

“Ugh,” Sophia grunted, startling the two of them out of their silence, Taylor turning her head to see a tired, unhappy-looking Sophia trudge her way up the stairs just behind them. “I can’t believe I was excited to return to this shithole.”

Emma snorted, earning herself a paradoxically warm glare from Sophia.

“So, you’re checking out the sports teams?” Sophia redirected, striding forward without a care, forcing Taylor and Emma to follow, blowing through the invisible barrier that she had felt grow more pronounced the closer she had gotten to the school.

Taylor tried not to grimace. She wasn’t looking forward to that, as much as she had grown used to Volley, the prospect of joining any team - except for volleyball, for what should be obvious reasons - was not something she really wanted to consider. The second stipulation for her probation was joining a school club, any of them, and being a low-income school, the majority of those clubs were sports teams. “I’m pretty sure everyone is doing catch-up practices after the lunch bell,” she offered, not really hearing the enthusiasm in her voice, regardless of how much she tried to inject it. “I’ll get to choose between any of them.”

“Why not just join, ugh, what’s it called... that computer club? Robotics or whatever?” Sophia probed.

“It’s just the computer club,” Taylor pointed out, not managing to keep the grimace off of her face this time around. “That and it’s because _he’s_ there.”

Sophia blinked. “Brent?” She whispered after another moment.

““Greg.”” She and Emma said in sync, nowhere near as quiet as Sophia.

Sophia gave another confused blink. “...Who?”

Taylor groaned while Emma let out a short burst of cackles, drawing the attention of a few people loitering near the front door.

“Greg Veder,” Emma said conspiratorially. “Is the nerdy blonde kid with the bowl cut. He’s in like half of our classes, and he has been absolutely _smitten_ with Taylor since ninth grade.”

“Do we really have to talk about this?” she asked, unable to keep the nasally whine from her voice.

Sophia’s mouth widened into a grin that made heat crawl up Taylor’s neck, though for what - embarrassment or something else - she wasn’t about to unpack right now. “Oh, no, _please_ Emma, tell me more.”

“ _Well_ ,” Emma began, slipping into a narrator’s lilt. “Have I ever told you about the romantic poetry incident of 2010?”

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Sophia watched Taylor go, trudging off towards the field like she was walking her way down executioner’s row.

“She’s going to be fine,” Emma said, after a moment. “She’s just huffy, she gets like that. That and... well, she’s better than I have seen her in a long time.”

She could almost _hear_ the pride in Emma’s voice, mingling with something else, something more loaded.

Leaning back into the mat, Sophia hummed. “She’s been seeing the therapist on rotation every day, I think. I’m pretty sure her mom’s been talking to mine about getting her connected to a therapist.” Her therapist, admittedly, or someone who worked in his office. Hopefully they could find something in their budget, for all that there were some improvements, Taylor still needed... more.

She knew that much, had known it since she’d figured out her identity, but especially after that incident following Taylor’s first therapy session...

Shit, she still had to talk about that with Emma, didn’t she?

Groaning, Sophia let herself collapse lengthwise across the bench, one leg dangling over one end while her head rested against the slightly damp, cold surface of the wood. Emma, nearly perched on the edge of the bench to accommodate, just gave her a raised eyebrow in response.

“That’s good, though,” Emma said quietly. “She’s getting better, I’m seeing more of m—the Taylor I used to know in her.”

She didn’t miss the slip-up.

Sighing, Sophia watched her breath curl around her face, a small cloud of fog that quickly faded into nothingness. She let her eyes turn to the sky, tracing over the bright blues, the sharp ache of the sun pounding down on the ground, strikingly bright and clear. She almost wanted it to be dreary, almost wanted it the excuse to get away from the discussion, to pretend like nothing had changed.

Taylor kissing her had been an act of self-hurt, her way of pushing people away, lashing out. Sophia had forgiven her for it, had long before Taylor had come, and apologized to her; a broken cast to her face, looking like she might crumble if Sophia rebuffed her, if she turned her away for her actions. She still hadn’t managed to act like she didn’t _want_ Sophia to do that to her, couldn’t quite hide the confused and jagged cast to her face, the confusion that settled into acceptance at Sophia’s response, but... there was tangible improvement. Shaky, fragile, freshly-laid improvement, baby steps, but improvement nonetheless.

Breathing out another sigh, Sophia glanced up to look directly at Emma’s face, causing the girl in question to freeze. “Taylor kissed me.”

Emma blinked once, twice. “Oh,” she said, sounding almost defeated.

“It was right after her first therapy session. She was hurting, she wanted to be hurt by me, was lashing out because of it.” Sophia let the words sink in, let the air around them still. “I forgave her for it, she did overstep my boundaries, but I... I got why she did it, why she thought she needed to do something like that to push me away.”

Something in Emma’s eyes was hard, malice contained and condensed down into a single point. Hatred, bitter and cruel and ready to hurt, raked over her expression. “ _Brent_ ,” was the low hissed word, a guttural noise that barked itself out from between Emma’s clenched teeth.

For not the first time, Sophia was sincerely thankful that nothing in Emma’s life had led her astray, had turned her into someone eager to hurt those around her, someone who was criminally sadistic. She had the capacity for it, she was scarily proficient at pulling people apart, observing the cogs that make up who someone is, and then bending them until they couldn’t connect with each other, let alone anyone else. She’d only seen scraps of what she’d done to Brent’s reputation, to his support network, and the idea of that turned against someone who might not actually deserve it terrified her.

Then the hatred was gone, and Emma found her center again. On and off, like a light switch. Honest to god, Sophia really was glad that Emma showed zero interest in taking up her father’s torch and becoming a lawyer.

They said nothing for a while, just sitting there, Emma staring down at Sophia with an expression on her face that slowly, but distinctly, transitioned into something not unlike fragility. “I...” She hesitated, paused. “I have strong feelings towards both of you.”

Sophia stiffened.

“I’m like, really gay, you know? I haven’t really been open about it but from like, ages of four onwards I kinda just _knew_. Boys were icky, I never really liked them, their shapes, their presence. I liked girls, and I only hung around other girls. Taylor was my first crush, I’m pretty sure, and just...” She made a helpless noise, harsh and low. “I thought she was straight? We never talked about it, and... I vetted Brent for her, when he started showing interest. Even though I liked her. I didn’t want to ruin what we had, I didn’t _need_ to, I didn’t need that out of Taylor, I still _don’t_. I’m perfectly okay being more than friends but less than _girlfriends_ or whatever. I’m actually fine with that, I could live the rest of my life in that position and be happy. I couldn’t find anything bad about him, sure he had a German name but if family names indicated anything besides _maybe_ your ancestry I would be a member of the IRA.”

That was a lot to absorb, but Emma was rambling and Sophia wasn’t really in a place - or particularly wanted - to stop her.

“Then she’s ripped out of my life and there’s just this _hole_ , this _gap_. She gets more and more distant, more harried, pushes me away harder and then goes silent for the end of the year. She calls me up one day months later, a few weeks into September”—a hitch in her breath, frantic and almost desperately nervous—“ _begs_ me to see her, to talk to her, and I do, and she shows up in this lumpy fucking hoodie and pulls it down and she’s got this awful black eye and bruising around her throat and arms and she tells me _everything_. So I ruin Brent, I get her back, but there’s still that gap there, something’s missing.”

It took a lot not to comment on the ‘getting her back’ part.

“But we’re growing closer and, y’know, you had become a big part of my life by then, right? You and Vicky, though the latter mostly because we were forced to sit in the same room for five hours while my dad and her mother tried to impress the DA, not to mention she’s more like an annoying cousin. By then I had started liking you, too, more than I usually let myself, and... now Taylor’s back, and that gap is still there but it’s _closing_ , getting smaller, and it’s harder to pretend the crush wasn’t a thing.” Emma made another noise, low and confused and reedy. “But, I think, maybe I can keep my head on normally. I can just, the gap was _enough_ , right, she was taken from me but that gap was just large enough that we weren’t as close as we were prior to Brent, and I could just, use that to balance myself.”

“Then you found out we started dating,” Sophia murmured, the timeline clicking. 

Emma nodded. “Then after _that_ , then I find out you’re fake dating, but it’s clearly become more than that, and that you’re both _you know_ , and everything makes so much _fucking sense_. But, but, then, with all of those secrets gone?” She paused, her gaze intense. “There’s _no gap anymore_ , Taylor is as close as she was before Brent and it turns out instead of getting over her I have just been _fucking pining_ after her even more, that distance and that disconnect didn’t diminish fucking shit.”

Sophia said nothing, couldn’t find the words to even begin saying something.

“Then there’s _you_ , and... just, I like you too. So much, I like _both_ of you so much, like I’m some sort of greedy fucking _thing_. You’re just as important to me as Taylor and I just... _can’t_. Are you two going to start dating? Am I going to have to just, go? Where do we go from here at all?”

Closing her eyes, Sophia breathed out. “Taylor likes you too, you know.” She let her eyes open again, straining against the brightness. “We’re—me and Taylor—something, I don’t know what we are, but you’re that same sort of something to me." She remembered how Taylor’s behaviour around her had changed, the small differences, the things she did to Emma without knowing. "To us. Me and Taylor-we wouldn't have anything without you."

“That still doesn’t fix anything,” Emma mumbled, sounding drained. “It doesn’t fix any of this, there are three of us, relationships just... don’t work that way, even if Taylor would agree to it.”

“She could,” Sophia said.

Emma startled, her eyes flitting up to meet hers once again. The air was charged with something, something that Sophia couldn’t really put _words_ to.

“I think, if we reached out to her, talked about it with her,” she started, trying to keep her voice level as her heart pulsed rhythmically in her chest, clattering against her ribcage. “She’d be more receptive to it than you think, Emma. I might not be plugged in to that sort of thing, but I know about relationships that involve more than two people.” It had come up during her therapy later on, when they talked about intimacy and how it varies between people, between groups of people, what _types_ of intimacy exists. She’d always had problems with platonic intimacy, if not romantic displays of it, holdovers from her trigger event.

Emma wet her lips with a swipe of her tongue, swallowed visibly. She was leaning over a bit now, ginger bangs hanging in front of her face, eyeliner sharp against the slight flush of her pale skin. “I—are you sure?”

She wasn’t entirely sure, no, but... Taylor had behavioural habits, ones Sophia had picked up on over time. Things she did to some that she didn’t do to others, how careless touches with her and Emma were normal but she shied away from any physical contact with just about everyone else. There were differences in how Taylor had treated her versus Emma, there had been something charged to it, something less gentle, but she had seen a similar type of behaviour displayed towards Emma a few times, possessiveness that went beyond just friends.

“About as much as I can be, and we can still discuss it with her,” she said instead of what she was thinking. “Even if it doesn’t, we can still figure something out.”

Sophia reached a hand up carelessly, let her palm rest against the curve of Emma’s cheek, a flush blossoming from where skin met skin, heat crawling over her face, darkening the blush. The air got thicker, Sophia’s hand continued up, over her ears - drawing out a breathy little sigh - and then into her hair, fingers tangling. The air tightened around her shoulders like a blanket, Emma staring down at her with lidded eyes.

After a few moments, Emma leaned forward ever-so-slightly, a sign, agreement.

Sophia drew her down, brought Emma’s mouth to hers, fingers scratching against her scalp.

She tasted like peppermint.


	23. B-TRACK 2.8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor poses, Sophia plans.

The Lambert Modelling Studio looked identical to how it had appeared years ago. It was a brownstone building, built in a brownstone district, but unique for the fact that at some point someone had carved out the surrounding buildings and replaced them with military-style housing units, all but the studio itself. Rumour had it that Madame Lambert had fought tooth and nail to keep her building, the only one on the street who didn’t sell, didn’t let them fill it all in with cheap apartments with ugly faux-brick facades.

All told, the studio was three floors high and noticeably wide, with a passing resemblance to the front of a stereotypical mansion, just significantly smaller in scale. The lot had a small space on the left to park cars, eight or nine parking spaces all told, and on the right of the building was, in any other season, where they would pin colourful sheets and tarps to the wall and to the ground, making a little shelter in which they’d set up some basic public seating. Madame Lambert herself generally sat around in it during the summer, drinking from tall glasses filled with lemonade and giant ice-cubes, smiling as people passed her by on the sidewalk.

Blinking away the memories, Taylor refocused on the present. She had never personally been inside of the building before - even if she had waited outside for Emma more than once - but the memories were atypically vivid. Truth be told, it wasn’t that she didn’t remember a whole lot of her childhood, it was more that a lot of her childhood was... blurry, indistinct. There hadn’t been a lot of changes in her life; she’d lived in the same house, had the same friends, went to the same schools, walked the same roads, and so oftentimes memories had an odd habit of blending or blurring together. That had changed later on in her life, admittedly, but everything before junior high always felt cloudy.

“Is that her?” Alan asked, leaning over the steering wheel of his car and squinting off towards the front doors. Taylor followed his gaze, caught sight of the woman. She was tall, with a face covered in freckles and hair that was off-auburn, a little too much brown to be called red, but a little too much red to be fully called brown. She wore heeled, black leather shoes, dress pants with a high waist, a blouse with a low collar, and one of those thick, dense cotton jackets thrown over all of it. It was a clothing style Taylor had come to call ‘PRT casual’ in her head.

“Yeah,” Taylor confirmed, reaching down to unbuckle her seatbelt, the sound of Emma doing the same rattling just behind her. “That’s Ms. Grant alright.”

Ella Grant - _call me Ms. Grant, I’m more used to it_ \- was a deceptively perceptive person. Their first introduction had been... less than great, riding off the coattails of selling her immediate future off to the Wards and the emotional wreck she’d been in the immediate aftermath of Hookwolf she had been, to put it lightly, unreceptive to Ms. Grant shouldering her way into her life. They had bickered, argued, it’d been actually one of the first times in a long time she’d been able to feel well and truly angry and express it, and she was pretty sure Ms. Grant _knew_ that, and had incited her anger intentionally.

The thing about being on probation in the Wards was that it was a messy and convoluted situation. A lot of it was, as far as she could tell, public perception; the Wards were already an uncomfortable concept to some people, children fighting criminals, with the possibility of being put in the direct path of an Endbringer. Add in that probationary Wards were usually given the option as an alternative to time in a correctional facility, and well, people had a lot of concerns. Coerced child soldiers was not something you wanted attached to your organization, regardless of how well-intentioned it might be.

Probationary Wards all got handlers, assigned when they officially agreed to join and only being changed in very rare cases, regardless of if personalities conflicted. In practice, the handler was half-social worker, half-crisis worker, intended to be there if she needed anything in any circumstance. They did weekly meetings to cover goals, and there were two random wellness checks every week to accompany it, presumably to ensure they didn’t have a ticking bomb in their ranks, and if they did, to defuse said bomb before it could go off and hurt somebody.

Though, it was a bit late for that with her, wasn’t it?

Tugging the handle, Taylor shouldered the car door open, reaching down with her other hand to wrap white-knuckle tight around the rough strap of her duffel bag. The cold wind outside was remorseless, cutting across her skin, stinging brightly, and her boots crunched against the thin layer of snow that had powdered the ground the night before, turned brittle and crusty after a long, cold night. For all that she had bemoaned the inconsistency of Brockton’s weather during the start of winter, she kinda wished it had stuck around when this was the alternative.

Shrinking further into her jacket, her breath puffing against its fuzzy collar, Taylor hoisted her bag up over her head, laying it diagonally across the front of her body before quickly stuffing her hands back into her pockets, trying to recapture some of the warmth she’d felt in Alan’s car. Hip-checking the door shut, Taylor waited just long enough to see Emma and Alan get out of the car, displaying equally disgruntled faces when the wind slapped them in the face, before pacing along the wall and making her way towards Ms. Grant.

It took barely any time at all for Ms. Grant to notice her. Her face didn’t light up necessarily, but the smile that slid over it was glad and relieved, a brief show of vulnerability, before it slid back into poised professionality. Taylor wasn’t personally her biggest fan for being able to put on a mask like that, even if that was hypocritical considering who her best friend was, but she still returned the brief smile, even if Ms. Grant probably wouldn’t be able to see it beneath the hem of her jacket’s collar.

“Taylor,” Ms. Grant greeted, flicking her eyes up to a space behind her. “Mr. Barnes and... Emma, was it?”

“It’s good to meet you,” Emma said politely, not giving anything away in her tone.

Alan audibly walked up to her side, his shoes crunching against the snow. “We should get in out of the cold,” he said in lieu of a greeting, his smile that same sort of unreadable expression she’d seen him wear around a client or two. “I’m not nearly dressed well enough for it.”

Ms. Grant snorted, eyes flicking across Alan’s decision to wear a thin black fabric jacket in the middle of winter. “I can only imagine.”

The smile the two adults in the room shared was catlike and bordering on unpleasant.

Emma huffed noisily, warm fingers tangling into Taylor’s cold ones after briefly brushing over her hand as a forewarning, the slight tug of her arm dragging her along after her. “Let them posture,” Emma muttered mutinously, sniffling. “I’m going inside before the entire front of my face is covered in snot.”

Taylor let herself get dragged along, past the two adults who were, honest to god, posturing like malicious peacocks, onto the sidewalk, and then to the flight of three concrete stairs. One of Emma’s thumbs smoothed over her knuckles, a soothing gesture that made her relax fingers she hadn’t even noticed she was tensing, the lingering warmth from clasped digits radiating up her arm, making her chest buzzy and warm.

Emma jabbed the doorbell with her free hand, a low chime going off just beyond the door, muffled by the wood and stone.

Glancing around at the sound of crunching snow, Taylor caught sight of Alan and Ms. Grant, smiling like nothing was bothering either of them even when the slant of their mouths were just a bit too sharp to be natural. Ugh. Adults. _Protective_ adults, at that, were the worst type of adults sometimes. Being around for this wasn’t a competition but clearly they’d try to make it one. If Sophia was here - and not preoccupied with a meeting - Taylor bet she and Emma wouldn’t be trying to make it into a _thing_.

There was the sound of rapid footfalls stumbling across the floor. The lock audibly churned in the door, a loud brassy click, and then the entire thing was hauled open with a creak of wood. Behind it, a girl with warm brown skin and wavy black hair that had been pulled back into a tail, looking maybe eight or nine, stared up at them with big, big brown eyes.

Emma and Taylor stared back.

The girl blinked once, twice, then turned. “ _Maman! Mémère!_ ” she bellowed at a volume that, frankly, the lungs in her tiny, skinny little body should _not_ be able to produce. “ _Elles sont ici!_ ”

Without missing a beat, the girl spun around, looked at them with the snootiest expression Taylor had ever seen on someone, let alone a kid still in her single digits. “Come in,” she said smoothly, her voice just _barely_ influenced by an accent. She turned to stare at Emma, eyes narrowing ever-so-slightly.

“Can we not today, Coraline?” Emma asked weakly, sounding almost defeated.

Coraline - apparently - smiled with far too many teeth before pulling the door fully open, finally letting the group in. Taylor’s first impression of the entryway was that it looked about how she expected it to, with a bunch of coat-racks, polished bright wood floors, and walls covered in ornate, flowery wallpaper. The entryway was just a long hallway, as far as she could tell, with a stairway recessed into the middle of the wall that led up and one door at either end of the hallway otherwise. The entire space was lit up by buzzing ceiling lights, less showing the age and more letting everyone hear it.

“Stop looking at the ceiling and take your coat off,” Emma murmured, finally untangling their hands and reaching up to tug her own off her shoulders, folding the jacket in half and then over one arm, walking her way over towards the coat-racks. Not seeing anything else to do, Taylor shed her thick, furry coat, still feeling the chill even with the door shut, and hooked its hood into one of the prongs on the rack, letting it hang messily, but at least she got it off her body. Emma draped her coat over her own even when there was a free space not an inch or two away, but for what reason Taylor wasn’t about to ask.

Louder steps started above them, quickly growing louder as they made their way down the stairs. They weren’t as rapid as Coraline, not _hurried_ , but they still walked with enough speed to make it clear that they weren’t taking their time.

The woman who descended far enough down the stairwell to be visible wasn’t the one she’d expected to see. She’d expected Madam Lambert, expected the old woman with too much energy in her body, who guarded the people who went through her agency like diamonds, memories of her scaring off boys looking to talk up Emma burning in her head. Instead, she got that same woman with the startling resemblance to Madame Lambert just significantly younger, maybe in her mid-thirties, tall and with very sharp features, bordering on hawkish.

The woman turned her head to Coraline, smiling in a way that softened all of her rough features down to something strikingly _warm_. “ _Okay, tu peux aller là-haut._ ”

Coraline lanced forward, scrambling towards the stairs with a muttered “ _dieu merci_ ” slipped out beneath her breath, sounding someplace between annoyed and relieved. On her way up, the woman reached down and ruffled what of Coraline’s hair she could get access to, sparking a squawk of offence out of the girl before she was off again, looking like she was climbing up the stairs on all fours, accompanied by rapid clattering and banging.

“I’m sorry about my daughter,” the woman said, though it felt like she was saying it more to Emma. “ _Ma mère_ is upstairs waiting for us. It’s Taylor, yes?”

Startling a bit at being addressed, Taylor glanced up at the woman, awkwardly shifting on the heels of her feet. “Yeah, Taylor Hebert. It’s nice to meet you again.”

The woman clicked her tongue, though it didn’t sound like a noise of annoyance, just a tic of some sort. “I am glad that you took my advice, even if the situation is difficult. I am Joanne Lambert, you are more better acquainted with my mother.” Her voice was, like Madame Lambert herself, almost completely without an accent, only coming out in the first few words following anything she said in french.

Ah, so she was Madame Lambert’s kid, which probably meant Coraline was Joanne’s kid. Huh. Family business, she supposed.

Beckoning the group of them forward, Joanne turned and started making her way up the stairs, Emma trailing after her first, with Taylor following her, and everyone else keeping behind her. The stairwell was cramped with five people in it, barely wide enough to fit two people shoulder to shoulder and dimly lit, but it wasn’t an unpleasant space, not by a long shot. Pictures lined the walls of various girls grouped together, smiling widely at the camera, she could even pick out Emma out of one group, her shock of ginger hair setting her apart from what otherwise seemed like an endless sea of blonde.

The second floor was surprisingly open in comparison to the tight and narrow corridors below, with the stairwell transitioning into a wide, glossy-floored open area. It reminded Taylor of ballerina studios, with tall mirrors across the walls and smelling generally of sweat. The area was littered with some clothing, tucked away in the corners, and in the very center of the room was a loft-style metal spiral staircase, looking deceptively fragile even as Coraline scaled it in barely a few seconds.

“That girl,” Joanne muttered, rubbing a hand over her brow.

Alan made a noise of sympathy, Emma turning to shoot him a truly unimpressed look, making the sound die abruptly in her father’s throat.

Ms. Grant dutifully looked away from the byplay, though from the way her lips kept twitching she probably found it more than a little amusing.

“Right this way,” Joanne continued, walking along the length of the floor, the group spreading out to trail after her. They drifted towards the far right corner of the room, where now that she was closer Taylor could make out a single ornate wooden door, veiled ever-so-slightly by a thin, almost completely see through curtain that had been at some point pinned above the door and then rolled back up to move it out of the way. The walls around the door were cluttered with papers, schedules and notices as far as she could tell, and there was a pretty massive corkboard that had yet more on it, though these seemed to be advertisements more than anything else.

Coming to a halt just in front of it, Joanne rapped her knuckles against the door.

“It’s unlocked!” Madame Lambert’s voice called out from behind it. Joanne reached down, twisted the brass-coloured knob with one hand, motioning them forward with the other, and pushed through. Emma was quick on her heels, confident and aware of her space, but Taylor - and, as far as she could tell, everyone else - was significantly more careful.

The office space through the door was L-shaped oddly enough, though the door led directly into the corner where the two parts of the room met. To her left, there were a small series of loveseats beneath windows with their blinds pulled away, letting in the bright blue light, casting the space in a cool glow. Plants had been placed between each set of loveseats, and there were a pair of side-tables stacked high with magazines. Straight ahead, by contrast, was the office proper, with an ornate desk, a swivel chair that reminded Taylor of the one Dr. Hartaputri had been sitting in, with bookshelves and cabinets lining the walls surrounding it. Scattered around the front of her desk were seats, enough for all of them, and haphazardly placed for all but two that sat directly in front of the desk.

Madame Lambert smiled, reaching out to close her laptop. “Taylor, Emma, Mr. Barnes and... I believe it was Ella Grant, yes?”

“Call me Ms. Grant,” Ms. Grant said, Taylor having to stop herself from mouthing the words along with her. “I’m more used to it.”

Madame Lambert didn’t miss a beat. “It’s good to meet you, even with the circumstances. I am Lydiane Lambert, but I am generally called _Madame_ Lambert by those who work with me. Come, please, find a seat.”

Ms. Grant went ahead before anyone else, and Taylor trailed after her. She took the left seat in front of Madame Lambert’s desk, and Ms. Grant took the right, smiling thankfully at her, a little quirk of the lips that faded just as quick.

“My own daughter likely assessed you when you stood in for one of my other clients,” Madame Lambert began once everyone had taken a seat, reaching out with wrinkly, bony fingers to open up a small folder. In it, images of Taylor in the two outfits they’d gotten her to wear were shown, and, surprisingly, she didn’t look that bad. “A bit stiff in the face, yes, but... adequate. You’re new to the industry, will have to be new, and so you’ll likely have to take some lessons to catch up with your peers, but I can see you doing basic magazine shoots frequently enough.”

Taylor blinked slowly, thinking. “All of that from word of mouth and a few pictures?” she asked after another moment, not really feeling it herself.

Madame Lambert smiled. “Dear, I am not training you to walk the runways or be an actress. My business deals entirely in _commercial_ modelling, not for Versace or Gucci or any of the other brands, they have their own suite of thin-limbed girls. You have a particular body type that is found among those looking for sportswear, athletic and tall, and with enough makeup and some after-shoot touch-ups anything they don’t like can be airbrushed away. You won’t be on a poster or a sign in New York, no, but then it’s rare if my girls ever _are_ , but you may see yourself in a Sears clothing catalogue or two.”

She took a moment to digest that.

“Emma has volunteered to help you with most of the classes and to be there on-set for your shoots unless schedules conflict, which I’ll try to work around,” Madame Lambert continued. “You aren’t going into this looking for a future in the modelling industry, are you? I am aware of some of the situation, at least as much as I can be with what I’ve signed.”

Ms. Grant made a noise. “About that,” she began, reaching into her bag at her side and pulling out a stack of papers bound away in another manilla folder. Madame Lambert made an undignified sound in the back of her throat, not quite resentment but plenty of annoyance, as it was laid in front of her. “I think we should go over some of that, yes?”

* * *

“The first thing you need to know about this type of modelling is that looking natural in the pose they want you is significantly more important than looking _perfect_ ,” Emma began, sounding very sure of herself, her hand - never closing fully around her arm - helping maneuver herself around a bit more, making it so that her back was arched a little more, the basketball between her hands posed right above her head. “They can fix up things after the shoot, and yes that sucks to see sometimes, but the main goal for these magazines is to be _relatable_ and look like you wouldn’t be out of place if you stepped off the page. That means your expressions, if they’re shown, are important, and so is how you hold yourself.”

Taylor heard Emma step away, leaving her posed, her legs slightly cramped as she kept her face in a pose that Emma had called ‘focused, but not constipated’.

There was a shutter sound, then a flash of light.

“You can drop it now!” Coraline yelled, and Taylor did, letting her legs turn into gummy worms as she stumbled back, the basketball falling free from her hands and bouncing once or twice off the tarp beneath her feet. She immediately stretched her arms above her head, trying to work the stiffness out of the joints in her shoulders, the ache a low burn that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

“Taylor, do come here?” Joanne said, peeking out from behind the motley of photography equipment. Trudging her way over, Taylor maneuvered around the lights and what else, coming to a stop right beside her, the laptop showing two images. One was of her, when they’d told her to try to pose ‘as naturally as possible’ and, well, it didn’t _look_ particularly natural. Her face was this cramped non-expression as a result of not knowing what to show on her face, her legs looked locked, not the light and bouncy posture of an actual basketball player, and she was too straight in the spine. The other picture, meanwhile, had her with a focused - if ever-so-slightly stiff - expression, with a bowed back and legs that, while feeling locked and grounded at the time of capturing the photo, looked ready to bounce at a moment’s notice now that they had been captured in still frame. She was holding the basketball better as well.

“It’s an improvement,” Emma muttered, very deliberately leaning on top of Coraline with her elbows, who tried to swat at her with her free arm. They seemed close now that the two of them had stopped bickering, almost siblings really. “A good one, too. If this went to an editor I could see them using it.”

Joanne made a noise of assent. “It’s not perfect, but then that’s what photoshop is for.”

Taylor flushed a little. Emma reached over, fingers brushing against her shoulder in the equivalent of a pat, the touch leaving behind a lingering warmth that coiled tighter in her chest.

“But you see, with classes? All of this will become easier, natural. You’ll have to do some work on your own, you are too used to standing stiffly, too awkward sometimes, but... it’s very workable. I think we could get you in for at least a few gigs for the summer catalogue.” Joanne glanced her way, Emma’s hand pulling away just before she saw the two of them. “I know we already signed you on, but I hope this helps alleviate some fears.”

“It does,” Taylor admitted. She hadn’t said a whole lot during the meeting, most of it had been NDAs and signing and talking about excuses and alibis and whatever else, but she had spoken about not being sure if this would work for her. She had always been an awkward person, always in that middle stage of growth that meant she was too long, too gangly, stumbling over her own feet. She hadn’t thought her posing like that _would_ be possible, but then the evidence, with just a little work and some admittedly unwelcome cramping in her calves, proved her wrong.

“We will do more photos next visit, I believe it’s about time for you to go,” Joanne explained, tabbing out of two photos and bringing up a cluttered schedule before switching over to a far less cluttered one a few seconds later. With a few more clicks, the printer to the left of the laptop began to whir, paper going in blank and sliding back out with her schedule inked into it, albeit in monochrome. Joanne plucked the page from the outflow tray, extending it out to her. It was still warm when she took it into her fingers.

“Hey, Taylor?” Emma’s voice drew her attention back around, meeting eyes with her. “Can we talk for a little? Privately?”

Taylor glanced down at Joanne, looking for permission.

The woman shrugged. “Do what you want, I’m not your mother.” She paused. “I am the mother of _one_ of you Coraline and so help me if you try to spin what I just said—”

The nine year old let out a cackle that was disquieting with the sheer amount of mischief it packed into it. Joanne groaned, shooting her daughter a look.

Emma’s fingers tangled into the hem of her sleeve, tugging a few times before more insistently trying to drag her away from the small part of the room they’d set up to do the example shoot. Following after her, Taylor tried to pick up on anything in Emma’s face, wariness, upset, discomfort, but found nothing. Her stomach twisted a little, churning, but she pushed down on it.

Finally, once they were on just about the other side of the room, tucked away in one of the corners, Emma slowed to a halt and turned around, leaning her back against the wall.

“Emma?” Taylor tentatively asked.

“Me and Sophia kissed,” she blurted after another moment, reaching up to comb a hand through her hair.

Taylor blinked owlishly.

“And talked,” she added after another moment. “A lot, about things, even after the kiss. We talked, a lot, about... about what _we_ are, the three of us, not just me and Sophia. I did some research on my own too.”

Taylor twitched. “Do, you uhm, guys want me to set up a way to break up with Sophia? We might not be really dating but I can work to keep—”

“The opposite,” Emma interrupted, blowing through her words like a bull through a pane of glass. “I—we, Sophia, I, whatever, we, we want more. With us. With you.”

The words lit up the embers in her chest, turning them into a dull roar. Taylor swallowed, feeling suddenly parched. “I don’t follow,” she lied, still needing a moment.

“I like you,” Emma said, and it was a bit of a blow to hear it. “So does Sophia.” So was that. “I... Taylor, hon, we won’t force you into anything, you can reject both of us if you want. We can give you space, we can do anything you need, nothing will change if _you_ don’t want it to, but... I... yeah, _I_ wanted to say this. You’re already a big part of my life, a big part of both of our lives, but mine especially. I’ve liked you for a long time, and I like Sophia for just as long, and ... and it’s the same with her, for us.” The flush running over Emma’s face was hard to ignore, igniting like a wildfire when the words slipped past her lips.

Taylor breathed in, out. The fire was buzzing around in her body now, a low burn that made her nerves on edge, that made her reckless and impulsive. She wanted to say yes, wanted to blurt it out, because... the support, the intimacy, it was more than what it had been. Sophia especially, she _liked_ Sophia, liked Sophia like she liked breathing and it had taken all of her remaining time with Dr. Hartaputri - who had been now swapped out for somebody she didn’t know, somebody who she would have to meet on Monday - to come to terms with that. She had been hurt by intimacy, but it didn’t mean intimacy _would_ hurt her.

Not unless she let it. She ... she liked Emma, a lot, and it had been nebulous for as long as she could remember, even in those blurry childhood memories. It had never gone beyond friendship, but it wasn’t like she was averse to it. Emma had never been her _sister_ in that sense, she had never classified her as such, just something more than friends but less than lovers. It had always been _fine_ sitting there, on that line, she had enjoyed the closeness it provided without it possibly ruining her friendship over miscommunications and childhood fears that coming out as bisexual would make Emma hate her. It hadn’t, of course, not like it had made Brent, but...

Swiping her tongue along her lower lip, Taylor braced her head against the wall. She let the tension drain out of her, tried to think of the image of Emma and Sophia kissing, what it did to the knots in her chest, how her stomach clenched with something that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. She slipped her eyes open just a little, left them lidded, stared at Emma for a long, long moment, and tried to imagine kissing her. She could, the images came easy, tasting peppermint on her tongue, smelling it in her hair, the warmth traded from skin-to-skin. It was really easy to imagine it, almost hard not to now that the idea was in her head.

Where was her place in something like that? It wasn’t like she didn’t know, Mom’s history had been varied and when sex education had been a thing in the Hebert household Taylor had learned about more things that just what parts fit together. She had learned about queer people, about polyamorous units, about how relationships and intimacy are complicated and don’t exist in static terms, and that what works for people is probably what’s best for them, that forcing relationships into boxes rarely did anything good for anyone involved.

None of those ideas were new to her, they hadn’t been. Her Mom had made sure of that, made sure she wasn’t going into things blind, or at least as much as she could.

But, to repeat, where would she fit in? She could like Emma that way, _liked_ Sophia that way, but where were the lines? She hadn’t been close to anyone since Brent, didn’t think it would be good to structure her expectations off of what she experienced with him. Boundaries, rules, intimacy, closeness, she _wanted_ it, she knew that much, she’d wanted it even when she was with Brent and that feeling hadn’t _faded_. It wasn’t like in the movies where the abused woman shirks her romantic interest because she didn’t want intimacy after what she experienced.

No, it was the safety, the vulnerability, that left her uneasy, but... she trusted Sophia and Emma. Trusted them, and knew that irrational distrust was a product of her experiences. She could identify that now, even if abstractly, even if every bone in her body was screaming at her to shut down and start spiralling. She could see that glimmer, that bit of her that they’d worked to cultivate, the coping mechanisms she’d been fed, the wise mind stuff that they’d focused so much on.

Breathing out, Taylor shakily smiled. “Can you give me some time to think about it?” She needed to know, needed to figure out where her place was, if there even was one for her. If she was even in the right mental space to graduate their relationship to something more than what it was, more than that nebulous, blurry thing that she’d been clinging to.

Emma slumped in relief. “Taylor,” she murmured gently. “We’ll wait for however long you need to give us an answer.”

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

“We’re coming up on Volley’s reveal,” Armsmaster began, arms folded behind his back. Sophia watched him narrowly as he stood, the rest of the Wards perking up at Taylor’s cape name. “Which means we need to talk about contingencies.”

Missy stared at him from across the table. “Contingencies?”

Miss Militia coughed, drawing everyone’s attention to where she was seated. Director Piggot was a few paces away from her, relaxed back into her seat, while the rest of the adult heroes sat scattered in fold-out metal chairs behind the two of them.

“Volley,” Miss Militia began, “will likely always be connected to Shrike. The timelines are too close, the powers are too similar, we considered branding her as a combat Thinker who got outfitted by Kid Win or Armsmaster but we decided against it because it likely wouldn’t pass muster. The Empire may claim it plays to the rules, but there has been dissent, as far as anyone can tell, and it’s likely at least a few will attempt to cause trouble during her reveal.”

Placated by the answer, Missy slumped back down into her seat.

“We will have most of the Protectorate on-site and out of sight when the reveal happens. We will additionally be outfitting the area with confoam sprayers and Volley herself will be required to wear a specially-made vest which can protect against bullets at the cost of maneuverability. We don’t think they will try to kill her, but any chance on her life is still a chance, so security measures will be strengthened. We haven’t seen Victor recently, and I fear he may be setting something up explicitly for this.”

Armsmaster’s words left everyone silent. Victor might not be the scariest cape out of the Empire, but he was one of the most sadistic and viscerally bigoted of the lot. He enjoyed hurting people, reducing them to weak shells of who they once were. Given time and targets, Victor could become a threat in a large number of ways, and his absence had everyone both worried and relieved. Worried because of what he could be doing, relieved because his victims were, outside of a select few capes, some of the worst to handle. How do you explain to someone that their ability to speak has been stolen and they’ll have to relearn from the very basics? How do you even begin to approach that dilemma?

Sophia hadn’t ever figured it out. Personally, she was just glad she wasn’t ever really _expected_ to either. Anti-hero branding had its perks, she supposed.

“Ideally we’ll have the Wards on call as well, though mostly for evacuation in the event an attack does take place. Everyone here will have to focus on getting reporters and civilians out of the way while the rest of us come down on the Empire.” Armsmaster spoke with a stilted, flat sort of voice, sounding almost reluctant to do this at all. “After this, Volley will be officially allowed to begin production of her tinkertech again, and her first patrol will take place after she has built up a reasonable enough arsenal of basic equipment. However, due to this, Volley will be unarmed when on stage, though we’ll have props we intend to have her design her projectiles after, she will still be at risk. This is why this is so important.”

“Why aren’t you just letting her tinker?” Sophia asked before she could really help herself.

Armsmaster _visibly_ winced. It was nearly the most expressive she had ever seen him. “I can’t say much, but it’s because we’re concerned about what happened during testing. We don’t want another repeat, so we’re taking it slow with her lab access and intending to gradually loosen our control over the times where she is alone and tinkering until she transitions into full general access, as Kid Win has.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Director Piggot said before Sophia could get a word in edgewise. “The loaned capes we were given will be remaining long enough to be there for her reveal. She will be safer than she would be if she took an additional week to Tinker and _then_ did her reveal.”

It wasn’t, really, but Sophia wasn’t about to say that.

“Let's establish where we will be placing everyone in the area,” Armsmaster began, and as unwilling as she was, Sophia forced herself to pay attention.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Maman_ \- Mom/Mama.  
>  _Mémère_ \- A very informal way of saying Grandmother.  
>  _Elles sont ici_ \- "They are here". Not sure about this one, my Chiac is really rusty and I couldn't honestly tell you if this is right.  
>  _tu peux aller là-haut_ \- "You can go up there"; referring to letting her go upstairs. I think. I took this from a subtitled show I knew had it, so I'm not entirely sure?  
>  _dieu merci_ \- "Thank God"; I'm not entirely sure if I remember people using it sarcastically, but here's to trying.  
>  _Ma mère_ \- "My mother".


	24. B-TRACK 2.9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor debuts, Sophia protects.

You didn’t really _get_ what it was like to have a barely-functional costume until you had something to compare it to, and no matter what she particularly felt about her old costume - or about the fact that it had been incinerated shortly after she had been allowed to peel it off her body - her old costume had its faults, plenty of them. The main one was that she hadn’t really made most of it, the bodysuit had been a budget wetsuit with stretchy fabric adhered to it _very carefully_ and she’d just worn a jacket, boots, occasionally gloves and a scarf along with it. None of it had fit together all that well, her domino mask had the habit of peeling off when she sweated, and the entire thing had become something of a mess.

Her new costume was the dead opposite. Rotating her shoulders, Taylor felt the fabric of her bodysuit pull against it, stretch as she twisted her body around, angled and curved it without a single indication that it would tear. Reaching out with her hand, she smoothed her palm across the little bits of padding around her chest, her stomach, small bits of protection they could fit in without taking away from her maneuverability. The fabric blend was pleasant to the touch both when she wore it and when she touched it from the other sides, if still a little stiff and smelling faintly like a new car, like something she hadn’t quite broken in yet.

Glancing down at the rest of her costume she’d strewn over the table, her fingers came to a rest on the jacket. It was short-sleeved, pure white for all but the neon-green lines that ran along the sleeves, over the shoulders, then curved back down to frame ‘ENE’ written in big letters, with ‘Volley’ written beneath it, just about where a jersey would have the player name and number. Ideas whirred, clicked, for a moment she ached for a place to tinker, the bodysuit could support so much more strength from her exoskeleton without risk of ripping and the jacket, even if a bit heavy, wouldn’t impede her much.

Shrugging the thoughts away, she curled her fingers into the fabric, hoisting the jacket with a grunt. To the touch, it did feel a lot like a windbreaker, vaguely crinkly, but it was heavier than she’d expected, padded with more armour. As far as she knew, they’d be taking it out after the debut - it was just a precaution - but even with it in there, she wasn’t really complaining. Pulling the bottom of her head and worming her arms into the sleeves, Taylor emerged from the collar of the jacket with a little gasp of air, her breath puffing at her glasses, leaving them smudged.

The jacket was heavy, that much hadn’t changed from carry to wear. It sat on her shoulders noticeably, the front was stiffer than she’d expected, felt almost like goalie equipment, but the weight, again, wasn’t entirely unpleasant. It felt almost anchoring, in an abstract way, like it was keeping her from getting lost in her thoughts. Ignoring the urge to pull her hair free from beneath the jacket, she blindly reached behind her neck, fingers dancing over the wrinkles in the fabric until they slipped over a ridge, curling around the protrusion as soon as she found it. A short pull and her hood began to unfold, rigid with umbrella-like spines that made it so that it remained upright on its own, a small _click_ echoing out into the empty changing room as it locked into place above her head, acting as both a way to conceal her hair and as a bit of protection around her head.

Taking a moment to breathe, Taylor tilted her body back and forth, tested the range of motion in her neck, and came up surprisingly pleased. It was more limited than it had been when she’d had the scarf and the domino mask, but not by a _lot_ , and unless she’d need to do some pretty awkward twists of her neck, it wouldn’t impede her in any significant way.

The shorts were the next obvious thing to put on, and there wasn’t a whole lot to say about them. Disgustingly well made, with fabric that was both a little stretchy but also tough-feeling to the touch. They were white, cuffed with neon-green around each leg and around the stretchy band of fabric that made up its waist. Stepping into them, she pulled them up her legs and onto her hips, rocking back on her heels as she felt them cling to her body, stopping just short of her knees.

On an impulse, she tucked her hands into the pockets of her shorts, just to see if anyone had left anything in them. They hadn’t.

Turning her focus back to the pile of equipment on the table, Taylor reached for the belt next. It was black, made out of some thick, heavy material that felt somewhere between polyester and leather. Curling it around the waist of her shorts, she fed the tongue into the clasp before pulling tight enough that she could feel it press against her body, lacing the length of the belt into place once she found it comfortable. Patting around her sides, she could pick up on places to put projectiles, throwables, little hoops and hooks to put her equipment on, she could already imagine a new dispenser and how it would hang just behind her left leg, how the weight would feel.

Blinking away the ideas behind her eyes, Taylor plucked the shoes off of the table next. Identical colour scheme to the rest - most of the shoe was white, with just the treads and laces neon-green - and styled after a runner’s sneaker, they felt and weighed significantly more than she’d expected. Stepping into them after first unlacing them, her foot fit snugly into the interior, boxed in on all sides by what felt like quite a bit of padding, more than enough to protect her feet. Lacing her shoes back up, she kicked at the toe, felt the shoe flex in response, her heel settling into place more firmly, aligning everything perfectly. Her feet were perfectly supported, no unusual ache in the arch of her foot, no jostling around inside due to looseness or toes cramping from them being too small.

It was a bit embarrassing to say, but she hadn’t ever owned shoes which fit this well. It was almost surreal.

Not willing to dwell on that, Taylor tread back over to the table, getting used to the feeling of the shoes, and pulled the elbow and knee guards off the table. The elbow guards weren’t like the ones used for skateboarding, but rather those sleeves of fabric with protective bits adhered to them, making putting them on significantly easier than she’d expected. They made flexing her arm a little more difficult, but not enough that she didn’t think she wouldn’t get used to it. Unfortunately, her knee guards happened to be the same kind, so the next five minutes were spent squeezing them over her shoes and up her legs until they cuffed her knees, blending - much like her elbow guards - perfectly in with the black coloration of her bodysuit beneath them.

Bouncing a few times on her heels, Taylor let herself grow used to the little bit of extra force she’d need to bend her legs and arms, let it become more unconscious muscle memory than something she might have to focus on. The restriction would need to be taken into account when she made her new exo-skeleton, but most of the costume did. Just the bodysuit’s quality _alone_ meant she would be able to make something stronger now that she wasn’t risking tearing a massive hole in her costume by moving too hard.

Among the last few pieces of her costume were the arm guards and fingerless gloves. Slipping the arm guards on first, outside of it providing more protection and a little more weight, there wasn’t much to say. They aligned perfectly with where her elbow guards ended and they were padded more thoroughly for the top of her arm than the underside, though the stretchy, stiff fabric they were made out of made her think that they could probably take some punishment. The gloves, meanwhile, _were_ a change, slipping them onto her hands brought with it a fair bit of resistance, the protection around the knuckles of her hand flexing and tensing as she opened and closed her fingers. Her hands were heavier, harder, these weren’t gloves you wanted to punch someone with if you didn’t want to really hurt them.

For all that the loss of some finger dexterity burned a little, she couldn’t say she wasn’t more comfortable with military-grade protection around her hands. Tech with a habit of explosively failing when used as a melee weapon had always made her a bit edgy around her own equipment, even if she knew rationally that it wouldn’t turn into ballistic shrapnel without a good reason, it was still hard to shake the thought entirely from her mind. Probably for a good reason, if she was being honest with herself.

Breathing out, Taylor turned her focus onto the last piece of equipment she had to wear: her visor. It was little more than a slightly curved panel of opaque neon-green, with little clasps on either end of it to fit into place against her hood. Reaching out, Taylor tugged her glasses from her face, the world turning into colourful blobs as she folded the arms against her lenses and carefully placed them down on the table. Pawing around its surface, she found the visor after a few more moments, flipped it around, and brought it up to her face.

She had to blink away her shock. She had expected a green-tinted world, even if only slightly, but instead her vision had cleared and the world was in focus with no odd discoloration, even when she glanced up purposefully to stare into the light above her. For all that the visor stopped people from seeing her face, it didn’t stop her from seeing anything else, and though there was nothing otherwise in the visor to imply such a thing, Taylor had the odd feeling it was probably tinkertech, or at least something derived from it. Something about the clarity, something about how _thinking_ about the visor made the wrinkles in her brain itch, not quite able to decipher it themselves but still _wanting_ to.

Swallowing down her nervousness, she banished the intrusive thoughts, let the visor just be a pretty visor, and stepped away from the table. Her shoes squeaked against the floor, a marker-across-a-whiteboard sort of sound. She turned, ignoring another squeak, and paced forward, down the empty tables in the dressing room, her pace slowing down as she gradually approached the full-length mirror, purposefully turned away from it. She came to a stop right in front of it, flexed her hands, closed her eyes for a moment and breathed out.

Turning, Taylor couldn’t recognize herself in the mirror. The girl who stared back at her was inscrutable if kind, a shy smile tugging at her lips, her head framed by a hood that hid most of her hair beneath it, wispy black curls only implied when they peeked out from beneath her earlobe. The white and green did a lot to draw the eye, while the black protective gear - gloves, arm, knee and elbow guards - blended in perfectly with the black bodysuit beneath them, only differentiated by the glassy surface across the pieces of shaped protective plastic. Her shoes drew the eye, the only piece of extra equipment that wasn’t black, and when she kicked one leg out the neon green of the treads almost seemed to leave behind a trail, contrasting as harshly as it was against the bodysuit and other accessories.

The shy smile turned a bit more broad, not showing teeth but no longer so restrained. She didn’t _look_ like Taylor, she couldn’t even really recognize herself in the mirror, but she also didn’t look like Shrike. She looked like a protector, like someone who knew what they were doing, someone who wanted to help instead of hurt. Her jaw creaked as the smile threatened to pull into a full grin, but she managed to hold it back, reaching up to brush fingers over her lips, as though she might be able to manhandle the giddiness in her chest down before it could burst past her teeth.

A small laugh teased itself out of her mouth before she could stop it, fluttery and high, almost breathless. She was actually doing this, she was becoming something more than what she was, _this was actually happening_.

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

The Brockton Bay PRT HQ had an outdoor auditorium, a carryover from before the PRT had arrived in Brockton and bought out a long-closed theatre hall, torn most of it down, and then put up the HQ in its place. Personally, Sophia hadn’t really understood why they refused to tear it down, it was a hexagonal space with a stage taking up about half of it, mostly because the stage itself was really just a small building on its own that connected to the bigger HQ through a single door. It was well-maintained, she could give them that, but it had always felt like a security risk.

From the vantage point she was at this time, though, she could _kinda_ see the appeal. The region around it had been retrofitted, buildings next to it bought out and remodelled to have cubbies in them that people could get to and peek out over the crowd. The roofs were occupied as well, with small barriers behind which PRT officers and police huddled, on alert and ready to fight. That was the appeal of an outdoor auditorium, she supposed; even if it was bad for security, you could set up a pretty hard ambush in an enclosed space like that.

“Volley is out in thirty seconds,” Armsmaster’s voice droned in her ear, flat and toneless. “If you are not already, please get into proper positions and begin your watch.”

Rolling her eyes and smothering a curse in her chest, Sophia flicked her wrist, prompting the crossbow to unfold across it, aimed directly down towards her knuckles. She folded her fingers into a fist, prompting the crossbow’s limbs to draw back, creaking quietly until they finally achieved the arbitrary pull force needed and a single bolt slotted itself into place from the small collection of them stored in a bulkier band around her wrist. The narrow tip, sharp and as thin as a hair, gleamed in the midday sun even as Sophia had to bite back on a shiver from the cold.

“Ten.”

The crowd’s murmuring died off as the stage lights turned bright, swivelling to focus down on where Taylor would come walking out of. The world focused down to a point, quiet and the air thick with something like knotted tension.

“Five.”

Sophia scanned her eyes over the crowd for the fifth time in a row, looking for anything out of place and finding nothing. Unfortunately, if someone - or multiple someones - were posing as a news crew, she’d have shit all luck identifying them in a crowd. After all, most of the reporters were blonde and white. It wasn’t like Brockton Bay _just_ had a shitty contingent of neo-nazis or anything, that had to come from _somewhere_ , and it sure as shit might have something to do with the fact that most public figures were white. Whether that was a symptom of a greater problem or an actual part of the reason why Brockton was the nazi-infested hellhole, well, she didn’t know.

Didn’t really care either, speaking truthfully. Sure, her job would be easier if she could pick out which among the endless throng of faceless white people was the bigot she was allowed to shoot, but she hardly expected that to just _happen_.

“She’s on.”

Taylor appeared from behind the curtain to a small chorus of respectful applause, and it was hard to not focus on her. Taylor looked... _good_ , really good. Her costume, the colours chosen, it drew the eye, and for all that she did have a passing resemblance to a volleyball player, it was safe to say that she looked as armoured as she needed to be if she wanted to fight on the street. She was, well, _striking_ , even if she was huddled away in that hood, athletic and tall and looking more confident than Sophia had _ever_ seen her.

Swallowing dryly, Sophia tore her gaze away from the stage. She had a job to do, she could make eyes at Taylor later, when nobody was looking or expecting anything of her. She blocked out the speech Taylor was speaking, she’d heard it all before from the girl herself when she’d been dutifully rehearsing it between meetings with the PR guy, her handler, and her therapist. It wasn’t a very long speech, mind you, intended mostly to alleviate people’s concerns that while it was obvious as shit that Volley _was_ Shrike, that they could relax knowing Volley wasn’t going to _act_ like Shrike.

Because, really, that’s the game of PR for you. Sure, everyone basically knew the handheld projectile Tinker was the same one who had just spent months pinning nazis to solid surfaces, but nobody could _say_ that without getting into shit, and so now everyone had to pretend the obvious _wasn’t obvious_ while still making it clear that they weren’t going to act that way. For all that her vigilante dreams had been quashed by her mother, she was glad she’d never have to do talk in circles like that to justify _her_ existence. The entire thing gave her a fucking headache.

“We will now take questions,” Taylor’s voice drew her attention back now that she was done droning on about ‘protecting’ and ‘doing the right thing’ in that thinly-veiled apology of a speech.

The crowd grew into a tumultuous murmur, voices fighting over one another to get the chance, before finally they quieted as Taylor pointed somewheres into the crowd.

A white guy - shock-horror, what a _fucking_ surprise—no, she was getting annoyed, she was better than that, she was on duty for pete’s sake - rose up above his peers, saying something that Sophia couldn’t quite catch.

“Oh! Um. I’m a Tinker,” Taylor responded easily, her smile pulling at her cheeks in a way that made it clear it wasn’t all fake. “You’ll have to wait to see what I can create, but I have a lot of ideas.”

So _that’s_ what they were going for, the captain-of-the-sports-team vibe. It did work, Taylor was frankly unreasonably tall for her age - though if Sophia had to guess, she had stopped growing or was about to - and looked, even if a bit gangly at times, closer to maturity, especially when wearing her new costume. Sure, she wasn’t the leader of the Wards, wouldn’t ever be _allowed_ to be the leader if what Taylor told her about the specifics of her probation were any indication, but they could definitely pitch her as a team captain type of deal, and if she could rock that style, well...

Sophia wasn’t going to complain.

Ignoring the bit of heat radiating from her face, Sophia glanced back down to the crowd as Taylor continued to answer questions. Generally the press got between five and twenty, hers, if she wasn’t remembering incorrectly, had gotten all of six because she’d been asked a question they hadn’t prepared her for and so she’d answered honestly. Bluntness, apparently, wasn’t a very good trait of a hero, but considering they had decided to turn her into an anti-hero they’d played off her blurting “what do you _think_ I’m going to do, lady?” in response to some old grandma-looking woman asking “and what do you think you’ll be doing in the wards” as just a part of her branding.

Sure, she’d gotten in a lot of shit for saying something that rude, but she had been like twelve and angry and it had stopped her from being dragged around for PR events ever again. Small mercies, and all that.

“You next,” Taylor said, Sophia picking up on her voice again.

At once, four people rose. One was the person Taylor had pointed to, an older man with a head of graying brown hair, but the other three were closer to the back, clustered together. Of the group of three, two were women and one was a man, but she couldn’t make out their features, not for lack of distance but rather because each time she tried to focus on them her eyes slid away, not quite able to stare at them, something in her head twinging painfully with each attempt.

“Stranger danger,” Sophia murmured into her mic. “Three at the back, can’t look at them directly. Alarm?”

There was a moment of silence. “Setting it off,” Armsmaster confirmed, his voice cut off by the sudden blare of noise, a loud klaxon that filled in the auditorium. Most of the reporters dropped to their knees, hands over their heads, while camera crews pulled away and tried to get both themselves and equipment out of the way.

A pulse of air blasted out from the three, sending a handful of the press hurtling away with force. Whatever had been stopping Sophia from picking up on their appearances turned off, her eyes refocusing, their appearances distinct. Stormtiger stood between two women, one was Cricket with her cage-like helmet but the other wasn’t anyone she’d seen before. The woman had long blonde hair, wearing an iron circlet around her forehead, pronged like a crown, with a collared blue shirt beneath it that itself was pinned to her chest beneath a metal breastplate. On one shoulder, held in place by leather straps, was a shoulder guard, and on each hand she wore arm and elbow guards made out of metal, stopping just shy of her hands, which were left bare. The blue fabric of her shirt continued down past the breastplate, ending in something that wasn’t quite a skirt, beneath which metal was layered like big scales from the knee down, ending in a thick metal sabaton.

The woman raised her hand, and Sophia just barely spied the silver butterknife clasped tightly in it, glimmering with pearlescent energy.

“Possible Striker or Blaster!” was the most Sophia got out before the woman swung the blade down, a tear opening in the air in front of her, a portal made out of pearl-coloured energy. People scattered, including Cricket and Stormtiger, who launched forward into a sprint, moving aside as the portal widened and then shattered fully open, a beam of energy identical to the one the portal was made out of lancing out, aimed at Taylor’s head, missing her entirely and crashing into the wall behind her as she ducked and scrambled away from it.

“Engage!” Armsmaster barked.

They descended. Sophia swivelled her arm, aiming down it at Cricket, and fired, immediately sinking her fingers into her power, drawing it into her, pushing out. It was hard to explain what it was like being intangible, she could describe it as somewhat like falling. The world passed through you, she could feel gravity as it tried to tug down on her, an immense force that made her stomach-that-wasn’t-a-stomach feel hollow, empty. She drifted, watched with eyes-that-weren’t-eyes as Cricket flicked out of the way of the incoming bolt without even so much as looking back to check, though it did bring her to a halt.

From above, Dauntless descended, his boot skipping through her intangible state, vaguely uncomfortable as the energy he pumped into his equipment bristled against whatever she became when she turned intangible. It was hard to describe, really, a bit like combining the feeling of touching something with a lot of electricity running through it with the texture of sandpaper. She didn’t really _enjoy_ the feeling, truth be told, but it wasn’t like it was debilitating like electricity or fire could be.

Finally near the ground, Sophia slid out of her changed state, turning now that her vision had returned to full clarity. The blonde woman in the fantasy-style armour swung again, what Sophia could make out of her face beneath the venetian mask she wore twisted in rage as she cut another gap in reality, a spear of pink-white hard energy firing out as a spike, forcing Taylor to dodge away from it and back towards the center of the stage instead of towards the emergency exits. Clenching her fist, Sophia turned her arm towards the woman, hearing the click as her crossbow primed.

“Europa!” Stormtiger yelled just a mere second before she released the bolt. Europa twisted around just in time, narrowly avoiding the bolt by bare inches.

Europa swung again, a portal forming in front of her. Sophia shifted before it could crack open and spike her through, the feeling of that energy scraping through her phased state an unpleasant experience, worse than Dauntless but not enough to force her out of it. Hovering back, Sophia reconstituted, flicking her other wrist to activate her reserve crossbow while she brought the other one up, balling her hand harshly into a fist, priming the next bolt.

Before she could fire, Europa dropped the silverware back into a side pocket and pulled free a hatchet. The hatchet began to glow, churning, wavering at the edges, but not entirely changing shape. Flecks of the axe seemed to pull away from it, rapidly replaced by newly-formed pieces, but nevertheless leaving behind something not unlike dandruff in its wake. Europa swung wildly, an ungraceful lash of her arm that drew an orange crescent in the air in front of her, one that launched like a bullet in her direction, crossing the ten or so feet between them in barely an instant.

Sophia phased, bit back on a scream-without-a-mouth as the energy passing through her _hurt_. It ached, it almost _burned_ , but thankfully it didn’t seem to be damaging. Just interference, she’d know if the attack had _actually_ hurt her, it changed how she felt in the cloud, like pieces of her were out-of-alignment, fused together or just missing altogether. Reforming, Sophia shot forward, closing the gap before another swing, and released her fist, sending the bolt directly at her forehead.

Europa ducked, the bolt kissing her hair, and Sophia closed the rest of the distance with a jog of her legs, bringing her boot up and relishing the squeal of pain as the toe hit Europa in the nose, sending her stumbling back. Swinging her other arm up, reserve crossbow primed already, Sophia let the bolt fly just a bare second before a blast of air crashed into her arm, sending her tumbling into the seating, her head cracking against the wooden surface of a bench.

The world spun, churned for a few moments, an unpleasant sensation not too far from nausea biting at the base of her throat. Sophia wobbled, slipped off the bench and onto the ground, reaching up with one hand to press into the top of her head, her fingers coming away wet and red but not profusely. Just a scratch and a bit of a concussion, then, she could probably work with that.

Glancing up, Sophia had just enough time to see Europa, one of the javelins Shrike had been so known for clasped in hand, stab forward. Energy wicked the surface of the spear, blooming out as a beam of fire that formed an arrow, crusting at the tip with a solid black material. It snaked through the air at speeds even higher than the axe, aimed directly at Taylor, and just as she went to dodge, to get out of the way, the flame _turned_ , Taylor just barely managing to angle herself away from it so that the arrow of fire-and-rock stabbed into her side instead of her throat.

A second later, a figure about half Europa’s size and made entirely out of a shifting mass of fire, its features indistinct, slammed into Europa’s side, sending her to the ground and catching her on fire before a stream of containment foam smothered both Europa and the fire.

Assault shot past, a blur of red, too quick for Cricket to fully get out of the way of, his fingers dancing over the surface of her shoulder and sending her hurtling off to the side while Assault himself snapped to an instant stop. Battery blurred past him, a streak of neon blue that whirled forward and over Taylor’s crumpled form, returning to normal speed just in time to reach down and hoist Taylor into her arms, sprinting forward and towards the exit.

One of the capes from New York - Hoser, she thought - stood near the stage, hands outstretched as water collected into tight spheres which then erupted, a spray of high-pressure water buffeting the fire that had started to char and ember around the stage, quickly snuffing it out. On the ground, Cricket thrashed beneath Aegis, who had at some point pinned her after she had been thrown, while Vista stumbled to a stand, her nose slightly crooked and bleeding profusely, hand coming up to wipe a smear of it across her upper lip.

Kid Win came down with Gallant, looking upset and frustrated, the latter clinging to his side as they descended on his hoverboard, the entire thing wobbling from the collective weight of two sets of tinkertech armour. Finally, Velocity and Miss Militia appeared from around the corner, Velocity in particular shaking his head once Armsmaster glanced up to look at him, a grimace flashing over the man’s face before he turned his attention back to the pile of confoam Europa was buried beneath.

“Shit, Shadow Stalker.” Someone said, a hand coming out to brush over her head. She hissed, glancing up and finding Assault again, his face pinched and drawn. “That looks pretty bad.”

Reaching up to swat his hand, she missed entirely. So, the concussion was worse than she thought. She could still work with it. “I’m fine,” she grit out. “Where’s Volley?”

Assault paused. “Battery took her to medical. It didn’t hit anything vital, as far as I can tell.” He glanced down at her, something like understanding on his face. “I think you need to go to medical yourself,” he baited easily, though his voice was uncomfortably gentle for a jackass. “Do you need some help?”

Swallowing the bitterness and instant urge to kick him in the shin and tell him to go fuck himself was like swallowing needles, but she managed it. She had to check, just to make sure, she wouldn’t have any fucking idea what to do if Taylor _died_ or fucking _something_ —

“Shadow Stalker?” Assault repeated.

Sophia blinked, swallowed down the nausea and pretended she couldn’t feel the phantom sensation of Taylor’s blood between her fingers, sticky and clotted. “Yeah.”

* * *

Making it to medical was more difficult than she’d expected. Standing was a trial, and though Assault was polite and didn’t make a single joke about not being able to walk in a straight line, the very _fact_ she had to rely on him, use him as a crutch, made her want to try not to, but she knew better. Her head spun, lights above her made her nearly go blind with pain, her pupils were probably all sorts of fucked and dilated. She had so many questions and _fucking_ concerns, did they get Stormtiger? She knew they got Europa and Cricket or whatever the fuck but she hadn’t seen Stormtiger _anywhere_ and just—

“Room for one more?” Assault asked, breaking her chain of thought as he peeked the two of them around the corner and into the threshold leading into the medical area. The room was packed, a constant flurry of movement, nurses pulling away as someone sat hunched over, working quietly as Taylor shifted and groaned with each twitch of the hand. Battery glanced back at them, looking wan and drawn, but was stopped from saying anything as one of the nurses jolted forward, pivoting Sophia’s weight onto his shoulder and off of Assault’s before leading her in.

By the time Sophia was plopped down on one of the beds, a polite male nurse with a face covered in dark stubble wiping a pad across the cut on her head, they had finished stitching Taylor back up and were now applying some sort of cream to the side of her body. They had pulled her costume away, cut a hole right into it to get access, and Taylor... Taylor wasn’t looking great. Her visor was still on, making it hard to tell, but her face was blank, empty, too familiar for her own good.

“You’ll have to stay awake for the next couple of hours, just in case,” the nurse said, stepping away. “But outside of some advil that’s about as good as we can do for you. Do you think you can stand?”

Turning her eyes away from Taylor, Sophia shuffled a bit forward, pressing her heels into the ground as she rose to her full height. The world writhed a little, churned and shifted, but she managed it, which was more than could be said for the walk over.

“Not very well,” the nurse muttered after a few moments, before slumping a little.

Sophia wobbled, reached out with her hand to brace against the wall. The nurse stepped forward to help, but she waved him off, taking unsteady steps forward across the scrubbed, shiny tiles of the medical area, each one a test of balance and patience but still something she could at least do.

Taylor shifted ever-so-slightly as she approached, head turning off to the side to stare up at her.

Once she was close enough, Sophia reached down, touched Taylor’s face. “Volley?” _Taylor_ , she wanted to say.

She got no response.

Glancing up, Sophia flicked her eyes between the nurse and the stitched, charred wound on Taylor’s side, a nasty burn that looked cauterized at the edges. The nurse looked back at her, but didn’t move to stop her as she got closer, staggering a little as her knees knocked against the metal frame of the bed.

Reaching down to the best of her ability, trying not to send the world into a spin, Sophia closed her arms around Taylor’s shoulders. A hug, barely, one that made Taylor freeze, her entire body going rigid for a few moments. Her breathing got heavier, harsher, she sucked in a breath, then sputtered it out, and then, finally, a little sob, muffled into the fabric covering her stomach.

“That was _my_ spear,” Taylor whispered, and her voice had nothing but terror and fear choked away in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a wrap for B-Track! Next will be C-Track 3.1, where we'll return to Taylor in the aftermath of all of this. Thanks for your readership and whatnot.
> 
> Writing that fight scene was both easier and harder than I expected it to be.


	25. C-TRACK 3.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor, Sophia and Emma talk.

_January 22, 2011_

The paper band around her wrist itched, an inflexible, obtrusive ring of sharp edges and unwelcome textures. Her hospital room was sparse, leaving no evidence of what had taken place in just the last hour, clinically scrubbed down to its tiles, outfitted with little more than the bed they’d moved her onto and a wall-mounted television that she had turned off after the news had started talking about her reveal and the attempt on her life.

Truth be told, she was just glad they had opted not to include footage. Apparently, as far as anyone had been willing to tell her, there was footage and photos of her out there, clutching her burned, bleeding side and staggering to the ground, and the only reason why the local news channel wasn’t spreading it was because it wasn’t acceptable to air on a public channel.

Shifting in her bed, wincing at the crinkly-covered plastic pillow, Taylor tried to breathe. It was difficult, each puff of air brought a dull roar of agony to her side, each unsteady inhale pushing her ribs up against stitched, charred skin, making it feel like the wire they’d put her back together with would snap at a moment’s notice. Each exhale was a relief, the pressure abating, her side simmering back down into a more distant pain, hot and unpleasant and excruciating, yes, but nowhere near as bad. It switched up the tempo of her breathing, encouraged her to hyperventilate, short, quick sharp inhales accompanied by longer exhales, a perfect storm of discomfort that she had to work through to avoid choking off the oxygen from getting to her brain.

Shutting her eyes, she forced more of her body to relax, reaching up with the arm not connected to the heart monitor to wipe across irritated, puffy eyes. She didn’t remember much of the immediate moments after being stabbed, the pain had been too intense and she had been carried between hands, asked questions she couldn’t answer, and then put under the needle. It was all one long blur, smeared and congealed, she couldn’t even trust her sense of time with the memories. She did remember, however, Sophia’s weight over her shoulders, the smell of her shampoo beneath the oiled leather smell of her costume, the warmth of her fingers, the distant comfort that had made her cry.

Blinking away the memories, Taylor hissed another breath out, almost choking on it as the muscles in her side gave an unpleasant, violent spasm.

She also remembered Sophia’s warmth being taken from her, the long ache of loneliness, of _want_ , and then being filed away into an ambulance and moved through the city, the wail of the siren like television static to the small bits of conversation she could remember having with the emergency responders. Can you breathe, do you feel numbness anywhere, how bad is the pain, so on and so on and so on.

Another breath, cutting and painful, dragged her back into the present for a second time. She took a moment to just stare at the ceiling, curling and uncurling her fingers in the fabric of the sheets, working her jaw in circles as she tried to hold back the wretched noise of pain that built in her throat. It _hurt_ , it hurt like nothing she had ever experienced, not even the stab wound had been so bad. The pain radiated out, lit nerves alight, spread like cracks across the glass, making even her chest hurt, ache with something that wasn’t quite phantom pain. It was persistent, unending, she wanted to cry and make noises and scream, to vent the pressure that built in her side with each exhale, growing and growing and funnelling its way into her throat, into the cramp at the pit of her jaw, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, couldn’t let the pain out, couldn’t show it.

So she choked. She choked on the pain on the discomfort on the vague feeling of antipathy she still had about being stripped out of her costume by people she didn’t know and slipped into more comfortable sweats. She choked it all down like bile, swallowed it, and finally felt the scream trickle back down her throat, the pressure lifting, giving her just enough time to breathe and do it all over again.

Taylor shut her eyes, tried to compose herself, but was only met by the intrusive images of her spear pointing in her direction, fire licking around the shaft, building up at the tip into an arrow that blitzed itself free, chasing her down. Her next breath was a rattle, harsh and panicked, and her eyes flew open, spots flashing behind them as her side gave another painful stretch, raw and burning. She breathed out through her mouth, jaw gaped wide, each puff of air a harsh pant that built and billowed out of her mouth, starting first at the stem of her throat.

The heart monitor _beep_ - _beep_ - _beep_ ed beside her, its pace growing just as frantic for a few seconds before, with the shuddering panic, it settled back down into its natural rhythm. The lights above her head swam for a few moments before finally coming back into focus, the light glinting off of some sort of moisture that had caked itself to the left lens of her glasses, turning into a starburst. She tried to use that to focus, to count the imperfections across her vision, the places where dust or liquid smeared, and managed to relax again, deflate slowly, the muscles along her back uncoiling like some great beast she hadn’t known was there, finally loosening into placid, limp comfort.

Her side still twinged, still burnt with each fill and release of her lungs, but breathing came easier and it hurt just a little less, the stitches not feeling so eager to pop at the seams.

The door to her room rattled, shook, and it took a lot for Taylor not to jerk at the abruptness of it. She forced her body not to tighten again, to not begin knotting itself up into the bunches and cramps she had just been relieved from, and for once it listened to her, remaining lax, spread out, comforted.

With a _clack_ , the door was pushed open. Panacea, looking tired and lifeless beneath the hood of her costume, not quite able to conceal the thick, layered bags beneath her eyes, the pallor that made the freckles along her face stick out like inky dots across printer paper. They just stared at one another for a moment, something like regret settling into the tired lines on Panacea’s face for just a few moments before her face slid back into that professional, disinterested mask.

“Taylor Hebert?” Panacea asked, pronouncing her last name with an oddly _French_ inflection. Odd enough, in fact, that even Panacea seemed bewildered by it, but with a quick shake of her head she seemed to dismiss it.

Running her tongue over her lips, dried and chapped, she tried to bury the memories of their last encounter beneath the promise of the pain going away. It was, unsurprisingly, enough. “Yes,” she rasped, throat still sore from crying on Sophia’s costume.

Stepping into the room finally, as though she were a vampire and Taylor’s words had finally let her through, Panacea glanced briefly behind her. After a few moments, footsteps clacked their way down the hallway, sounding just a little too fast to be unhurried, Mom appearing from around the corner, her face twisting into a pained, morose expression, before settling into something resolute, firm.

For a moment, Panacea and her mother stood at a stand-still, Panacea taking up the way into her room, her mother standing just behind her, fingers knotted into fists at her sides. The tension rankled, scraped across her skin like sandpaper, before, finally, Panacea lowered her head and stepped to the side. Mom smiled politely at her, no warmth in her face, a mirrored professional facade that hid every problem beneath a submissive sort of blankness, a smile that she’d seen on her mother’s face when she was on the phone with the head of her department. Stepping forward, it took Mom all of two steps for the expression to falter, then drop, her strides lengthening until she covered the distance between the door and her bed in barely two steps, shaky hands reaching out to gently coax fingers against her arm.

“Hon,” Mom murmured, looking distant and lost. “I gave Panacea permission to heal you in the event you couldn’t, but she wants you to at least try. Can you talk?”

Taylor nodded, wincing at the way the motion jostled her wound. “Yes,” she said, this time without the hoarse croak to her voice, no longer so raw. “I can.”

Mom’s smile was fragile, almost bitter. “Okay. Your father’s talking with the PRT, and Emma and Sophia have been made aware of the situation, okay? They’re all waiting for you.”

Stepping away, Mom shot a loose, flat stare Panacea’s way, one that didn’t quite hide the way she was almost bristling around her.

Turning her head, she stared down at Panacea, the girl’s slouched, hunched figure framed between the ‘v’ where her feet made the itchy cotton blanket tent. The look on her face was blank, but beneath her stare it withered, slipped just enough to show what was beneath it. It was a bit of a whiplash of small expressions, annoyance that recoiled like a rubber-band into regret and then crumpled from that into sharp, painful guilt. Something in her face wavered, then deflated, looking almost defeated.

“You have permission to heal me,” Taylor finally said, each word pushed out like rocks. She didn’t like Panacea, didn’t like how she’d held healing over her head the first time, but... well, whether that guilt and regret was a product of actually feeling bad about what she did or was some unrelated problem, she didn’t know - or particularly care - but it was enough.

Panacea twitched, almost jerked like she’d been hit. A few moments of awkward silence passed before the words seemed to have clicked, and her shoulders relaxed, slumped, relief crawling over her features before, finally, the healer put a lid on all of it, returning to that blankness once again, though this time it felt more natural, less strained. Stepping forward, she paced the length of the room before coming to a stop at the space Mom had made for her, her hand extended as though for a handshake. “I need skin-to-skin contact,” she said, sounding almost as though she was reciting the words from memory.

Shakily raising her arm, Taylor placed her hand into Panacea’s. There was no delay this time, just a sudden absence of feeling, replaced instead by a squirming in her flesh, in her bones, that was, if not easy to ignore, then at the very least something she could compartmentalize, could push into the back of her skull.

Then, without any prompting, it was done, and feeling blitzed itself back into her body, her nerves ringing with pins and needles for a half-second before everything settled down into normalcy.

The absence of pain was an odd feeling. It was hard to explain just how much relief it brought, how she felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes as she took a big gasping breath, the first she’d been able to, without even so much as a twinge in her side. Nothing hurt anymore, nerves went quiet, no longer burning like acid, and for a moment she just soaked herself in that comfort, in that wonderful _nothingness_ that came with having a functional body.

“Taylor?” Mom murmured, jolting her out of her reverie. Panacea was walking towards the door, hands hidden back beneath her sleeves, not paying them any attention. She’d lost a few seconds then, not great. “Think you can stand for me?”

Nostalgia punched her in the stomach, a vague, indistinct memory of those words being used after she fell off of her bike and shredded her knee flickering across her vision. Swallowing down that sudden, achingly bittersweet burst of emotion, Taylor twisted her sides, did the same sort of motions she’d done to figure out her range of movement in her costume not too long ago, a costume that was now ruined. It was a cold comfort that she had spares.

“Help me up?” She asked, echoing her childhood self.

* * *

Despite a wobbly start, actually walking to the waiting area wasn’t as difficult as she’d expected. It was an odd thought, fleeting and intrusive, but she always expected that pain to come back, the all-consuming burn and ache, each time she took another step, and when it didn’t, she was still somehow surprised. She figured she’d stop expecting the pain to be there with enough time back at normalcy, but the walk from her temporary room, down the hallway, and to the waiting area wasn’t enough to convince her mind otherwise.

The waiting room for the hospital was surprisingly sparse for the time of day, seeing as it was maybe three o’clock in the afternoon on a Sunday. All told there were maybe ten, maybe eleven people tucked away on seats and benches, most of them being the elderly, and most of them looked more sick than injured. Emma and Sophia were tucked away, side-by-side, Emma’s head drooped against Sophia’s shoulder, their hair blending together as copper mingled with black kinky curls.

Alan, Dad and Ms. Grant were huddled away, far away from Emma and Sophia, talking in hushed but urgent murmurs. Ms. Grant looked tired, worn out, and Dad looked quietly furious, but not at Ms. Grant, because if he had been furious at _her_ , he would've shown it. Alan looked sympathetic, as much as he could be, specifically for Ms. Grant, which was a bizarre and disquieting thing to see on a man who had spent no small amount of time mindlessly competing with her like a flamboyant territorial dog.

Sophia was the first to see her, glancing up the second she and her mother passed through the opening in the door, a quick flick of her eyes that turned back down to her hands before flashing back up in surprise. Her hand reached out, jostled Emma a bit, who jolted up from Sophia’s shoulder with a jerk, red-ringed eyes blinking blearily before focusing in on her with an intensity that made Taylor almost balk. Emma was on her feet in seconds, drawing the eyes of most of the waiting room, nearly sprinting as she went from her seat to Taylor’s side fast enough even to make Mom jump a little, though something flashed across her face the near second before she would’ve gotten into her space, her entire body jerking to a stop, her arms stuck half-outstretched, halted mid-gesture.

Emma swallowed, her throat bobbing. “Can I hug you?” She asked, voice nearly a whisper. Her entire body shook, tremors that were most obvious in her arms, vibrating like a string.

Taylor ignored the feeling of eyes burning across her skin, including the look her mother sent her way. She nodded after a moment, not quite able to work the words into her throat, and was met with no small amount of force, Emma slamming bodily into her, arms tightening around her chest, nose buried stubbornly in the collar of her sweater.

Again, even despite knowing otherwise, she expected the pain to come. Emma’s grip around her ribs was tough and tight, nearly a stranglehold, would’ve been a stranglehold if not for the fact that Emma was, while not out of shape, certainly not a girl who had a particular fondness for bulking up around her arms and shoulders. No pain came, of course, replaced instead by a tightness in her chest as Taylor lowered her face down, pressed her nose into the crown of Emma’s head, and took in the smell of peppermint almost masking something more floral, something rose-scented.

Her body relaxed, her arms outstretched, and Taylor found herself quietly returning the hug, eyes shut tight.

Mom stepped away, her footsteps growing fainter and fainter, off in the direction where the other adults were clustered.

Fingertips brushed over her cheekbone, soft and fleeting. Taylor flicked her eyes up and open, Sophia staring back at her, arms dropping to her side. “Hey,” she murmured, the words only for the three of them, a hushed, hoarse voice so full of warmth.

Taylor hesitated for a moment, lingered, before reaching out with one arm and twining her fingers into the hem of Sophia’s sleeve, tugging her, opening the hug for her. For a moment, she almost thought Sophia would refuse it, and it almost seemed like she thought the same, before, with a rattling, resigned breath, Sophia stepped forward, arms encircling both of them, one arm around her shoulder while the other pressed in closer to the back of Emma’s neck, pulling them in gently.

For a moment, she just let herself bask in the warmth and touch and presence of Sophia and Emma. Oiled leather, peppermint, faint wood smoke, it all mingled together, a swirl of comfort, calm and safety. She soaked it in, soaked in the heat and the trembling, borderline-possessive grasp Emma had on her body, the warm blanket of Sophia’s encircling arms, the way Sophia’s fingers drew soft, featherlight circles near her spine, leaving behind goosebumps.

Then, finally, she let the world seep back in. She was tired, she wasn’t sore, but she was tired both physically and mentally. Fear had sucked the energy free from her body, left her with so little, just what comfort could provide.

“I think,” Taylor began, her voice smooth but weary. She felt Emma’s arms tense around her, and when she opened her eyes, just to check, she caught sight of Sophia, staring at her pensively.

The words caught in her throat, forced her to try again.

“I think we need to talk.”

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Fog billowed from the exhaust pipes of cars, from vents on the roofs and walls of buildings, the smell of laundry distant but distinct in the swirl of midwinter smells. The concrete was rough beneath her ass, pockmarked and aged from use, and cold from the small patches of ice that had come to rest in the valleyed surface. It was not a pleasant place to sit, would never be, but the warmth of Emma leaning against one side, Taylor against the other, was pleasant, more than comforting, even when each burst of wind scraped over what parts of her body were exposed like knives.

Turning her gaze off to the side, Sophia watched as her mother cajoled and joked with Alan and Annette, both of whom responded with their own laughter. The van was parked not too far behind her, Terry and Paula tucked away in its interior, her little sister’s face ghosting across the windows as she leaned forward to fog the glass with her breath before reaching out with chubby fingers to doodle odd designs across the surface, looking back towards Terry for advice or praise every dozen or so seconds.

Gumbo, unfortunately, was still at home, but despite his use to calm tensions, it probably wasn’t a smart decision to bring a dog to a hospital and risk setting off someone’s allergies. Admittedly, Sophia was of the opinion that other people could eat shit, it would be extremely unlikely for anyone to have a severe enough reaction to a dog to be hospitalized, but apparently ‘other people are stupid’ and ‘I care more about Taylor than I do stupid people’ aren’t viable enough arguments in the eyes of her mother.

Taylor shifted gently against her shoulder, rolling her cheek back and forth, almost like a cat. The idea didn’t really _track_ , if Sophia had to associate Taylor with any animal it would be a bird, flighty and twitchy, but a cat could fit some of her more moody, shit-eating tendencies, all things considered. After a few moments of shifting back and forth, Taylor sighed, a low noise that rattled out from her chest. “About us,” she began, and Sophia could feel Emma stiffen at her side, her body going taut.

“We don’t have to talk about it right now,” Emma said, her voice pitched low, quiet. “You just got out of the hospital. It’s fine, we don’t have to...” She trailed off, but Sophia could all but hear the ‘ _make permanent decisions’_ in the shadow of her words.

Taylor shook her head, this time without smushing her cheek against something. “No, I... feel like I need to talk about this.”

Another pause.

“About us,” she repeated, the words quiet.

Emma didn’t so much relax as she did deflate, untensing, yes, but almost slumping as a direct consequence. “If you’re sure,” she conceded tiredly, sounding resigned.

Taylor swallowed thickly, almost gulped. “I...” She hesitated, churned in her seat. “I want to.”

Sophia felt herself stiffen alongside Emma this time. Flicking her eyes away from the tangly crown of hair Taylor had, she glanced at Emma’s face, saw the contorted confusion on it.

“I was scared,” Taylor said after another moment, voice hoarse. “They used something I made against me, maybe not directly but they still _did_. I didn’t want to rush into another relationship, I was _scared_ , intimacy is difficult and, and while I know none of you would be like Brent, that I’m _safe_ , I felt like feeling safe was too risky, too vulnerable.”

A crow gurgled above them, building into a long, droning caw, then another, and then a third, before finally going silent.

“But I nearly...” her words trailed off, choked, and the sound she made stabbed Sophia in the gut, a knife of ice that burnt as much as it cooled. “I nearly didn’t get the chance to do anything,” Taylor continued, voice breathy, thick. “I like both of you, I want to be with both of you, I was just so... fucking caught up in myself, so afraid of being vulnerable. If I had died, that would’ve been it, though. I wouldn’t’ve had a chance. I _want_ a chance at that again, I want happiness.”

Sophia swallowed, tried to ignore the knot in her throat. “You don’t need a relationship to be happy, but, if you’re sure,” she finally started, speaking for the first time since they’d sat down. “If you’re not just rushing into this blindly, if you really want to, then, I’m for it.”

“Me too,” Emma echoed, her eyes too focused, almost catlike.

Taylor shifted, pressed herself closer. “Then, can we be together?”

“Yes,” Emma murmured gently, quietly, reaching out with one hand towards Taylor’s own, their fingers meeting, tangling together. Sophia found her own hand rising, palm pressing up beneath the tangled fingers as she curled each digit around the entwined hand, warming them from the cold, the feeling of Taylor’s thumb tightening down around the back of her hand making her chest tighten with a nervous sort of energy.

Taylor relaxed, just about flopped like a limp cat, her entire body going comfortably slack. She blinked sleepily between the two of them, their hands still all one messy knot of curled fingers and yanked thumbs, though now the bundle of entwined digits rested in Sophia’s lap, near her knees. She smiled after another long moment of silence, a shaky, hopeful sort of thing, looking, for the first time since Sophia had really met her, at peace.

Leaning forward, she buried her face into the curls on Taylor’s head, took in the lingering smell of a new costume and a citrus-y shampoo. Taylor fluttered a little, visibly shook, before relaxing even further, almost collapsing into her lap, her face tucked into the bump of her collarbone.

Driven by a force she wasn’t quite sure was her own, Sophia lifted her free hand from Emma’s back, reaching out with it. She took Taylor’s chin between her fingers, nudged it up, stared down at her eyes and asked a silent question. Heat flushed over the high peaks of Taylor’s cheekbones, colouring them a slight pink-red, and with a nervous sort of jittery energy, she nodded.

Leaning down, Sophia slanted her lips across Taylor’s.

The kiss didn't last very long, a few seconds, and wasn't much more than a peck, just lips slotted against lips, but it meant something, made her chest churn with an eddying, furious warmth. Pulling away, Sophia blinked a few times, glancing back down at Taylor, who still wore that blush high on her cheekbones, but didn't look embarrassed or ashamed about it.

Emma made a low noise, Sophia flicking her eyes back, catching the warmth that pooled in her lazy gaze.

Another short blast of wind easily killed the romantic, warm mushy feelings she had, cold fingers scraping over her face, into the gaps where her jacket's hood couldn't quite block it out. Shuddering, she tugged Taylor a bit closer to herself even though Taylor was colder than she was. "I want to do this somewhere that won't freeze my ass off," she muttered, mostly to herself, though the short huff of laughter that Emma let out made it clear she hadn't been quiet enough.

"It’s a date, then,” Emma announced, voice coy and lilting, almost mischievous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to C-Track! 
> 
> My schedule is changing due to life, and from hereon I will be updating Mon - Wed - Fri (so long as I can, anyway) with the occasional chapter during the weekends, so no more chapter every 2 days. Not even I can keep that up.
> 
> Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy what's coming next!


	26. C-TRACK 3.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor talks shop, Sophia watches a movie with company.

The elevator door shuddered, pulling itself apart down the middle as it opened. The light above her dimmed but didn’t quite turn off, harsh yellow light seeping in from the widening gap, casting itself across the reflective surfaces in the elevator. Taylor shifted on the balls of her heels, rocking forward and into a step as she approached the widening door, her eyes adjusting as she peered out and into the long concrete tunnel.

Her first impression was that it was a utility tunnel. From the pipes that clung to the walls, to the way exposed wiring had been bundled together and clipped to metal bands, pressed flush where the wall met the ceiling, to the cracked linoleum floors, spiderwebbed and broken as though someone had dropped something heavy, nothing about it resembled the clean, PRT headquarters that sat high above it.

Reaching out, Taylor pressed the heel of her palm into the elevator door, catching it before it could close. A long, unpleasant beep rang out from the speakers set into the reflective metal, jarring against her ears as it protested the blockage. Grimacing, she stepped forward before she could think better of it, the sound of her shoes hitting the floor echoing mockingly out into the long hallway, her hand pulling free from the path of the door, the noise jolting to a stop as the elevator shut behind her.

The yellow light filled in where white had softened it, cast from caged, buzzing lights bolted into the walls, connected together by wires that dipped and rose from the bundle above them, single strands reaching down to connect each individual. Glancing up, Taylor dragged eyes over the shiny metal of the sprinklers that hung from the ceiling, licked by sharp yellow, exposed and unrepentant, hiding absolutely nothing.

Swallowing down the reflexive urge to leave, to go back up to the maze-like, sprawling, almost hostile corridors of the PRT building, Taylor slipped her hands into the pockets of her replacement costume’s jacket, devoid of the temporary armour they had inserted into the costume they’d had her wear for her reveal. It still felt odd being in her costume, felt odd being on her feet not even two days after getting nearly killed, but then they wanted to get her started on tinkering as soon as they were allowed to, and that had been the day after her introduction.

Taking a step forward, then another, Taylor settled into a moderate pace, listening to the sound of her footsteps echo back at her, rebounding off of the metal pipes and concrete walls. Sometimes the floor crunched beneath her heel, a sharp and glass-like noise, and the sound would linger, jumping between the walls, growing fainter but lasting longer than it had any right to. She breathed in, tried to center herself, but was met with the thick smell of earth, metal and bleach, like copper pennies in a slurry of mud and commercial disinfectants.

Increasing her pace and taking shallow breaths, if only to avoid catching that smell in her nose again, Taylor watched as the door at the far other end of the corridor grew ever-larger. She had assumed it was maybe seven or eight feet all told, but as she grew closer, craning her chin ever-higher to capture the door entirely in her range of vision, it quickly became clear that it was noticeably larger. All told, it was probably about ten feet tall, maybe eleven or twelve, and about twice that in width, made from thick steel and set into a frame of red metal, with more of those caged yellow lights bolted to the frame. Beside it, out of place in almost every way, a PRT-issued card reader had been inserted into the concrete wall, its sleek design and blue-grey colour palette clashing with everything near it.

Again, that impression of something being made for someone larger, for giants, settled into the back of her skull. It was, at least, familiar; she’d felt that way about how the PRT building itself was constructed, the way it became clear that at a closer glance it had been built for handling threats, not for habitation, despite their attempts to wallpaper over the monolith of security that it very much was. She felt hopelessly out of place, like a child staring up at a skyscraper, not even quite able to see the top from where they stand.

She felt lost, misplaced, an _intruder_ ; there was a feeling like she shouldn’t be here, like she was going to get in trouble at any moment. Alarms would blare, someone would come out and yell at her for being in a place she shouldn’t be, for not being who the area was made for, regardless of whether or not it was true. The feeling wasn’t too far from the odd spike of anxiety she got when taking groceries out of the store, passing by the security detectors, expecting them to start ringing at the drop of a hat.

Pace crawling to a halt, Taylor stopped just a handful of feet away from the door. Angling her head even further up, she stared up at the ceiling, at the way they’d carved out several feet worth of it, a block of open space that the tunnel behind it didn’t share, all to fit that massive door.

Feeling her throat bob, she took another step forward, the noise echoing sharply, mockingly, and then another. Tilting her head back down, she made her way over to the card reader, glancing down at its sole opening. Reaching into the pocket in her shorts, Taylor curled her fingers into the ribbony fabric of her lanyard, pulling the keycard free with a tug. The lanyard was clipped onto one of the shorter ends, making it dangle vertically, and on the card ‘VOLLEY’ was written on one side, while the other was edged with a black stripe and had ‘WARD’ written in above it.

Flipping the card around, Taylor leaned forward and tried to feed it stripe-side down into the slot, only for it to not make it any more than three inches in. Blinking, she tugged her keycard free with just a little bit of force on the cord, flipped it around, and tried again, only for the card to not even sink an inch deep this time. Her chest constricted, choked off her air, the intrusive thoughts about not belonging, about being somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be, sticking in her head like rot, gnawing at her thoughts. Tightening her grip, she flipped it back around so that it was stripe down and tried again, and blessedly, thankfully, this time the card sunk home, slotting into place smoothly.

There was a creak, then a hiss, as the card reader’s LEDs lit up all green. There was another click, the card pushing itself back out just a few inches, prompting her to tug it completely free and drop it back into her pocket. The lights above her changed, going from yellow to green, the buzzing growing louder as the door rattled with a long, creaking metallic groan, plates shifting as the door began to pull itself apart down the center.

The first glimpse into the workshop was jarring, but not in a bad way. It was cluttered, to start with, the first thing she saw looking in was a bookshelf filled with plastic and metal scrap, with what looked like a half-dozen pieces of plywood leaning against it. The space around it was less cluttered, though a close examination of what she could see as the doors hissed and pulled apart was that the space was at least as big as the entire bottom floor of Emma’s house, if not more, with walls made out of concrete, though instead of those bright, painfully harsh yellow lights, someone had obviously torn them off the wall and replaced them with lines upon lines of fairy lights that hung and sloped between each wall, lighting the place up with bright white LED light.

The walls weren’t just the home to fairy lights, though. Posters, particularly a ‘BLESS THIS MESS’ poster easily six feet tall in a landscape format, stood proud and stark against the very back wall. Tables were strewn around, most of the metal and fold-out variety, cluttered with what looked like unfinished projects, most of which seemed to be attempts at guns - if the form factors were any indication - and various pieces of armour. There was, however, one table kept noticeably clean and entirely isolated from the cluttered scrap and mess that defined the rest of the room, with its own swivel computer chair and a cardboard box placed in its center.

Chris’ head peeked around the corner of the bookshelf, still wearing his mask but otherwise in PRT-issued sweats. “Oh,” he said, voice smooth if a bit nervous. “You’re, uhm, early.”

The doors rattled as they finally pulled completely open, a long one-tone beep echoing back down the hallway.

“Come in, before that closes again,” Chris quickly added, vanishing back behind the bookshelf and appearing near one of the tables, his head tilted her way. “Sorry about the mess, by the way.”

Stepping in through the metal threshold, Taylor stepped fully into the room, craning her head up to stare at the fairy lights a bit more, the anxiety, the vague nervousness and feeling of being out of place fading. The lab was wonderfully lived in, cluttered, sure, but a place that people worked and existed in, and everything was to scale for a teenage boy. It was, as she’d expected, a little larger than Emma’s bottom floor, maybe about half the size of Winslow’s gymnasium, and seemed to be separated into two. There was the workshop side, where the tables and mess cluttered, and then there was what appeared to be a large amount of machinery, one that was obviously a 3D printer, another that looked like some type of forge, with vents and fans framing the walls and hanging from the ceilings in that area.

The only thing that really divided the two spaces was that the mess simply _stopped_ after a point, but the line was clear enough, at least in Taylor’s opinion.

“You uh, going to say anything?”

Jumping a little, Taylor jerked around, glancing at Chris, who had at some point come to a halt a few paces away from her back. Breathing in through her nose, this time without the accompanying disgusting smell she’d been exposed to in the hallway, Taylor let out a shaky exhale, her heart settling down into a smooth, rhythmic pattern. “Sorry,” she said after another moment, trying to shake the cobwebs in her brain away. “This is just all a lot to adjust to.”

Chris opened his mouth to respond, only for the long shriek of metal shifting to interrupt him, the door noisily beginning to close behind her. Unable to keep a wince off her face, Chris quickly reached up, miming putting his hands over his ears, and without any other option, she did just that, pressing her palms down hard against her ears as the door creaked and groaned and shuddered itself back into a closed state.

Pulling her hands away, Taylor tried to ignore the sharp keening that filled her head.

“It does that sometimes,” Chris said after a moment, his voice cutting through the din. “Not sure why, probably something went wrong when they modified this from an emergency shelter to a workshop.”

Taylor swallowed dryly, hands fidgeting at her sides. “Has nobody bothered to fix it?”

“Armsmaster has tried,” Chris said, something in his voice almost dark. Taylor blinked owlishly at him, not expecting the anger, though it faded quickly from his voice and face before she could mention it. “But the person who originally built the door is dead and all we can do now is hope someone eventually pops up with a specialty similar enough to provide basic maintenance info. Otherwise, it’s just always gonna kinda _be_ like that.”

That didn’t particularly bode well. Taylor tried to keep her worry off her face, but from the way Chris shrugged inelegantly at her, a very ‘what can you do’ sort of gesture, she didn’t quite manage it, despite still wearing her visor and hood.

“Speaking of, what’s your specialty anyway? We got a lot of hearsay when you were a vigilante, but it was never made clear.”

The reflexive urge to lie was there, but it was significantly easier to get over than it had been last time. “Projectiles,” she confided after a moment, leaning back on her heels. “They’re better if there’s no auxiliary delivery mechanism, thus handheld. I can still make guns and things, they’re just... mediocre, and they don’t work with my Thinker power. What’s yours?”

That got her a smile, one of Chris’ actual smiles, that sly, too-calm mirth. “No idea,” he confided brightly, sounding in his own element despite the fact that it was news to _her_ Chris had no real grasp on his power. “Absolutely none. It’s not guns or movement equipment or power armour or even some of the more archaic stuff like hard light. It’s a broad enough specialty that I can create a pretty decent amount of mediocre tinkertech, but I have precisely no clue what it could be anymore.”

That... “I’m sorry?”

Chris snorted, waving her over with one hand as he marched his way towards the cleared desk. “Don’t apologize. I’ve come to live with it, I’ll probably figure it out eventually, and even if I don’t, I can still make things.”

Well, he had a better attitude about his situation than she certainly would’ve. She’d always kinda just... _known_ what her specialty was, and even if it hadn’t been a sort of innate knowledge, her power was restrictive enough that making things would’ve made her figure it out anyway. There were only so many things she could make that weren’t projectiles, and most of the ideas she _had_ came as projectile weapons, or at least were related to them.

Chris reached out, hefting the cardboard box from the table with a grunt. He swivelled, turning and marching forward, passing it forward wordlessly, Taylor taking it with a bit less effort. “Oleander left this for you,” Chris said after making sure she had it in hand, stepping away and releasing the box. “These are your ‘style guide’. That table is also _your_ table, I had been trying to clear out another one so we could both have two, but you’re going to have to wait a little bit.”

“That’s fine,” Taylor said without thinking, tucking her chin against the top of the box, carefully stepping around some of the scrap on the ground and walking right up to the chair, dropping the box back down on the table. “Why’d you give it to me, anyway?”

Chris glanced back, his face flushing beneath the shiny red of his visor. “Forgot it was your table, I’m uh, not used to other people being in here.”

Shrugging, knowing better than to stretch Chris’ embarrassment out any, Taylor turned back to the box and tucked her fingers under the top flaps. Clear tape had been applied over it, and she peeled it - along with the top layer of the cardboard - away after hooking her finger beneath the sticky plastic and pulling, the steady tearing sound surprisingly pleasant on the ears. With the tape out of the way, she flipped the flaps open, revealing the contents. Inside, several volleyballs about the size of baseballs were piled up beside a carefully-folded net and what looked, at a glance, like collapsible rods.

Plucking one of the rods out, Taylor flicked her wrist and, true to form, it extended out to something not too far in size from one of her javelins. “I thought I wasn’t allowed any of these?” she said, mostly to herself, though out of the corner of her eye she could see Chris glance up, his eyes flicking towards the rod.

“I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be the rods they use for the net,” he said carefully. “I don’t think they want you to make a spear, but maybe blunt rods are in the clear?”

...They hadn’t really covered that, thinking back on it. Sharp objects were a no, but looking at the collapsible rod, it would be a stretch to call it _sharp_ , considering it was a cylinder with flat ends. “Huh.”

“How long do you have, by the way?” Chris asked, glancing her way again.

“Mom’s coming to pick me up for a date at three,” Taylor said, the words dribbling out of her mouth impulsively, only being processed after the fact.

Chris perked up a bit more, something like genuine warmth settling over his lax features. “With Sophia?”

“Yeah,” Taylor said, and it technically wasn’t a lie.

“So you have like, six hours then,” Chris mused, voice sounding a bit distant. “I think I can cover what we need to talk about and still have plenty of time for you to think up some basic ideas. Oh, by the way, the scrap you see around you is free to use when we get to that, but also you have supplies in that trunk over there.”

Following the motion of his thumb, Taylor picked the chest out. It was flush against the wall, side-by-side with another chest that was identical for all but the plaque with ‘KID WIN’ engraved into it. Hers was much the same, just with ‘VOLLEY’.

“They’ll probably talk to you about your budget in a little bit, but at least at first I think they just want you to make whatever, so you’ve probably got a bit of a surplus. It might be different with Probationary Tinkers, though. Still, try not to waste any of it; supplies for Tinkers get refreshed once a month and it’s very easy to run out of supplies without warning.” He spoke like he was speaking from experience. Glancing around the area again, looking at the endless numbers of half-finished projects, he probably _was_. “But uh, since Armsmaster isn’t here and I’m kinda your chaperone, I guess we have to talk about how Tinker heroes work, and the Tinker scene itself in Brockton.”

Turning away from the box, Taylor glanced back Chris’ way again, catching sight of him plopping bonelessly down into a swivel chair. He tucked his legs into the ground and, with a bit of force, shuttled himself forward a few feet with the force, before doing it again, closing most of the distance between the two of them. “You’re probably gonna want to sit for this,” Chris added pointedly. “It’s a bit of a long conversation.”

Shrugging, Taylor tucked her fingers into her chair and wheeled it out from beneath the table, pulling it behind her and finally lowering herself down onto it. It was comfortable enough, she supposed, certainly more comfortable than the chair she was using for her computer at home.

“So, we—Tinkers—are unique even among other parahumans,” Chris began, settling into a more lax seating position, his back tilted back, eyes focused on the ceiling instead of on her. “A Tinker can be a Blaster or a Shaker or even a Thinker, we can create things that other people have to get powers to do. Our cost is, however, an actual physical cost; technology doesn’t grow on trees, and so we have resource issues. Still, even with that, part of what makes a Tinker so effective is their ability to counter other powers.”

“Shouldn’t you be asking me about my powers?” Taylor asked unthinkingly.

Chris glanced down at her, his chin scrunching at the collar of his sweater, before glancing back up at the ceiling. “Maybe,” he admitted. “But I won’t, because my experience with it was that someone tried to ‘fix’ my methodology and got disappointed when I couldn’t do things as they did. It’s easier to just let Tinkers do their own thing, I don’t need to know about yours, and you don’t really need to know about mine, unless we get involved in a project together. Which, we can, and probably will, that’s part of the appeal of having more than one Tinker.”

Conceding the point, Taylor hummed in affirmation, glancing back off towards a pile on the ground, the errant shaft of what seemed like a melee weapon sticking out from beneath a small pile of charred plastic.

“So, to continue, for us Tinkers, part of our abilities, and our goals, should be profiling villains and finding creative ways to either circumvent or directly counter their abilities,” Chris continued, mostly undaunted. “Part of what your building process will have to be devoted to _is,_ in fact, finding countermeasures to specific capes. Let's say, for example, you want to take down Skidmark. For me, anyway, my idea to handle his power was to build a shield that redirected the effect of his power back towards him. That’s a pretty reactive example, sure, but what I’m trying to get at is part of our job is handling specific threats with specific gear. It’s all well and good to be a generalist Tinker, I’ll be the first to admit, you can get some pretty big mileage with power armour, but where most of us _shine_ is in those specific countermeasures.”

Chris went silent, and Taylor took the moment to digest most of that. It... made sense, and it matched up with some of her early ideas. Yes, Ahab had started out as her wanting to get around the problem of aerodynamics by removing air from the equation, but it had evolved into being something more specialized to take down capes who used armour or had armour around vulnerable parts of their bodies. She bit her lip for a moment, swallowed thickly and tried to blink away the lingering images of Hookwolf from her mind. She could talk about that to someone later, she just couldn’t handle it right now.

Chris’s chair creaked, drawing her attention back in. He was sitting upright now, staring directly at her with a focused look on his face. “What do you know about the other Tinkers in Brockton?” He asked after another moment of quiet contemplation.

“In general? Like, what capes are Tinkers?” Taylor asked, finding her voice again.

Chris shrugged. “Sure, let's go with that.”

Scrunching her nose, Taylor thought about it. “There’s Squealer, she makes... vehicles? I think? Then there’s Trainwreck, who works under Squealer and... I have no idea what he makes, but he makes power armour. He might be a Case 53? There were rumours about it but I never really paid much attention. Uh, there’s Leet, and no clue about him either, and... that’s about it?”

“You’re right about Squealer,” Chris said, sounding like he was trying to soften a blow. “Trainwreck’s a Case 53, yes, as far as anyone is aware, and we believe he just specializes in an armoured body. Leet is... complicated, we honestly thought he was like me, unsure of his specialization, but the issue is that the tech that he makes that _works_ is the sort of tech you see as specialized tech. We’re pretty sure his power has a huge drawback, it seems that way, but as far as we can tell he either has an extremely broad specialty or none at all alongside some sort of restriction.”

Taylor blinked. “Seriously? Leet?”

“It’s kinda surreal to think about, but, yes, there’s a decent chance Leet is either sandbagging or is restricted in some way and can make just about anything. Nobody’s really sure, and until recently nobody has bothered to call in favours to try to see if they’re right.” Chris rolled his shoulders in a shrug, looking relaxed about the notion that Leet could be even marginally similar to _Dragon_. “You missed a few though. There’s also Chariot, who we think specializes in things related to mobility, he’s new on the scene, popped up at around the same time you did. He took advantage of the riots recently to hit a lot of department stores to stack up on resources, and he’s been throwing around some pretty powerful tech as a result. Lastly, there’s Glamour, who makes tech that, as far as we can tell, only he can see. Even infrared cameras don't come back with anything, though we’re able to interact with it and there are a few pieces in storage if you want to try to study them.”

She really kinda _didn’t_ , but, well, it was nice that he offered.

“The reason why I’m bringing these Tinkers up is that, unlike people with other powers, making specialized gear to fight a Tinker usually leads to an arms race to constantly counter one-another. These are generally very costly for resources, and it’s also very inefficient,” Chris confided after another moment. “You’re not improving your gear to penetrate deeper, but rather to ignore a specific type of soundwave that, for example, Squealer generates with the speakers in her car which disrupts your gear. It becomes a war of attrition and small changes that cost a lot, and it’s not the greatest idea to do so. Generally, if you’re going to take another Tinker down, you want to do it in one swoop. Avoiding getting into arms races is difficult, you’ll be tempted, especially with familiar gear, but it’s easier to wait and try another angle that might give you tech which can be used elsewhere than to constantly refine something like that.”

Taylor shifted back on her heels, the wheels of her chair clacking as she slid back a few inches. “What about generalized gear?”

“For you?” Chris asked, and Taylor nodded. “You never wore power armour, so I’m assuming you’re one of the few among us who really can’t make it. For you, generalized gear is going to be those balls, maybe a few of those poles, nets, that sort of thing. The idea with generalist gear is to make them good but _cheap_ , you especially. Your gear has a habit of being discarded after use, not that I think that won’t change, but it’s more disposable than, say, something like Armsmaster’s halberd, which he’s been working on for most of his career.”

He wasn’t wrong. She had ideas to regain her projectiles, but she’d mostly shelved them to keep up the Shrike persona. The telekinetic gloves to recall her weapons would probably have to be modified to better suit balls or rods, but... she could work with it, that much was for certain. “Is there anything else we need to go over?” She found herself asking, glancing pointedly at her trunk.

Chris made a noise, somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “No, but you’ll need to look over some of the files of the Tinkers and other capes when you next get the chance. Paperwork and research is, unfortunately, a pretty big part of being a Tinker, even though all you see on the news is people in power armour and laser guns.”

Fidgeting, Taylor glanced back at Chris. He looked relaxed, but a bit distant, like he wasn’t really there, wasn’t focusing. He had been nice to her, despite her invading his space, despite everything she’d done to make his life difficult. Was it because he was friends with Sophia? Was he only being pleasant because her girlfriend was his friend?

She... she didn’t really know. But she hoped she wasn’t. “Do you want to hear some of my ideas?” she asked without thinking, pushing herself up from her seat and into a stand.

Chris blinked at her, looking entirely unacquainted with the idea. For a few moments, she thought he would reject her, that the tenuous calm would snap and things would turn hostile, before something that looked like _genuine_ relief and warmth spread over his face, directed right at her for the first time. “Sure!” He said with more energy she had ever really seen him with, scrambling to his feet. “What do you have in mind?”

“I was thinking, maybe, I could make a shield that stretched between some thrown paired poles like an actual volleyball net.”

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

The sound of a car pulling into her driveway drew Sophia’s attention away from the television. Craning her head around, ignoring the slighted snuffle from Gumbo as she reoriented her body, knees digging into the couch cushion, pushing herself up so that she could lean over the back of the couch and through the window, Mr. Barnes' car crawled to a stop just a few feet shy of her mother’s bumper. Gumbo gave a mutinous grunt, nosing sleepily at her ankle, before apparently deciding it was too much effort to investigate and opting to instead lay his muzzle right across the back of her foot.

The car’s engine chortled, then stopped. A few seconds later, Emma stepped out, wearing a pleated white skirt, black leggings, white slip-ons, a fuzzy white jacket, and a black-and-white striped scarf. Barely a moment later, Taylor followed her, wearing waist-high slim jeans, red high tops, and a red shirt beneath an almost comically long trench coat-styled cotton jacket. On the jacket’s sleeve, someone had sewn a patch depicting an anchor surrounded by the letters ‘DWA’. She also had a backpack slung over one shoulder, an identical red to the rest of her outfit.

Almost immediately, Emma reached out to tangle her fingers with Taylor’s. She waved absently at her father, who was staring at the two of them with a look that all but had ‘shit disturbing’ written on it, but whatever would’ve come out of his mouth was quickly silenced by Emma just about slamming the door in his face. With much more gentleness, Emma turned to glance back at Taylor and then carefully tugged her up the driveway.

Wiggling her ankle until Gumbo, protesting all the while with sleepy whines, removed his head, Sophia slid from the couch and stumbled into a full stand. Stretching her arms above her head, she sent one last look at the television to make sure it was still on the idle DVD screen before marching her way towards the stairs, though she opted not to climb them.

A second later, the sound of knuckles against the wood of the door echoed out. There was a shout, a bang, and then Paula’s endless cackling. “I’m gettin’ it!”

...She probably should’ve gone up, huh.

Before she could try to intervene, the sound of Paula sprinting across the floor above her drew her to a halt. There was a loud click as she unfastened the lock, accompanied by the double beep of the alarm system acknowledging the door was being thrown open.

“Hello!” Paula said, her voice pitched because today was one of her loud days. “You are very red!”

There was a moment of silence, before, finally. “Thank you!” Emma chirped back.

“Not you!” Paula chirped. “The tall and skinny one!”

“ _Paula!_ ” Mom and Terry’s voices shouted in unison.

More cackling, then the scrambling of tiny feet hitting the hardwood as she sprinted away from whatever punishment might be pointed in her direction. Paula was more like Mom than either Terry or she had been, and it showed. Despite her quirks, she could be a real nuisance when given the chance.

“I’m sorry about Paula,” Mom’s voice said, barely audible. “Sophia’s downstairs, probably waiting right by the stairs for you.”

Uncharacteristic heat crawled over her face and before Sophia could think twice about it she was marching her way back towards the couch. Gumbo, at some point, had curled up into a small snuffy ball, reducing the amount of space he took up, and she left him to his sleep, dumping her ass right down onto the couch and reaching for the remote.

The sound of footsteps heralded Taylor and Emma’s arrival, clumsy stomps as they navigated their way down the stairwell. Taylor was the first to appear, hair tucked over one shoulder and carrying her book bag in one hand, but Emma was quick to follow her, a faux-pout curled over her face. “I am so much redder than you,” Emma pointed out, putting quite a lot of effort into sounding snooty. “I am _genetically_ red.”

“I’m pretty sure she’d consider you orange,” Sophia called out, Emma shooting a betrayed look her way. “She doesn’t really have a reference frame for copper things yet, weirdly enough.”

“I get first movie choice,” Emma decided rather abruptly. “If I’m being slandered in this way, I demand reparations.”

Taylor just looked back at her, quirking one thin brow. “You’ve been hanging around your father too much.”

“That’s slander! Libel!”

Sophia snorted, drawing Emma and Taylor’s attention back to her. “Sure, orange-head”—” _Hey!_ ”—“gets to decide the first movie. Please tell me you brought more than Disney?”

“I brought a few movies I found under the television cabinet,” Taylor announced, sounding convinced that her choices were the right one. They probably had been, though she did wonder what she’d brought with her.

Emma just smiled, smug and catlike. “I brought the entire Blade Runner hexalogy _and_ the Lord of the Rings trilogy.”

“She also made me carry every Disney movie she could fit in what space was left,” Taylor said, sounding very tired. Emma poked her in the side, startling an uncharacteristic squeak out of her. Was Taylor ticklish? Thoughts for later.

Emma sniffed. “My girlfriends are so mean.”

“That really was like Mr. Barnes,” Sophia said before she could stop herself, startling an offended squawk out of Emma and a snort of laughter out of Taylor, whose entire body seemed to relax with each quip, each bit of affection.

“Just for that we’re watching Blade Runner 5 without any context for the other movies,” Emma pronounced, reaching out to gently take the bag from Taylor’s hand before blitzing her way over to the DVD player and dropping the bag down on the floor beside it, unzipping the top and starting to rummage through it.

Taylor turned to look at her, then at the couch. “Will there be enough space?”

Sophia glanced at Gumbo, then at what was left. “Probably not,” she conceded, reaching over with her hand to drag gentle fingers down Gumbo’s back. Almost immediately he was alert, staring at her with calming, warm, but very focused eyes. “Gumbo. Seat.”

With none of the laziness he was generally known for, Gumbo rose, gently padding off of the couch and making his way over to the loveseat. She’d taught him that command when she used to have trouble with being around other people or things during some of her worst anxiety and paranoia moments. Even Gumbo had been too much, and so she’d channelled some of her energy into training him how to be _near_ , but not actually with her on the same couch. It had taken a while, but, as evidenced by the way he immediately settled down on the loveseat, his eyes open and trained on the room around them, she had done a pretty decent job.

“Taylor? Why did you bring _Click?_ ” Emma asked, glancing over her shoulder.

Taylor scrunched her nose, looking back. “I don’t even know what that is.”

“It’s that really awful movie about a ‘remote control Tinker’ who made a remote that let him control time and sped through most of his life. It has that actor you really hate.”

“Adam Sandler?”

“Yeah, him.”

“I don’t know, but it’s not coming home if he’s involved with it.”

Emma made a face. “You can’t handle all of your problems by breaking them, Taylor. Also, what if it’s like... I dunno, Kurt’s?”

“I’ll be doing him a favour by breaking it with a hammer.”

“You don’t even have a hammer.”

Sophia cleared her throat pointedly, Taylor and Emma glancing back at her and blushing at the same time. It was quite the sight, especially the way Taylor averted her eyes sheepishly. Emma, meanwhile, obstinately stared at her, stubborn as a mule, but that was part of why Sophia was fond of her. Well, mostly. “Blade Runner, remember?”

Blinking, Emma’s face lit up. “Oh, right! I think you guys will really love it! It’s got this really good director, I’m pretty sure it’s the only reason why the sixth movie was even _made_.”

Turning away as Emma rambled on about ‘dystopian themes’ and ‘cinematography’, though she kept an ear to it, Sophia glanced up at Taylor, who was staring back down at her. Reaching out with her hand, she raised an eyebrow, gesturing into herself with her fingers. Timidly, almost too timidly, Taylor reached out and took her hand, and when Sophia drew her in towards the couch, to her side, she didn’t resist, slumping down into the cushions with a small huff.

“Can I wrap my arm around you? I’m not sure about boundaries,” Sophia asked, keeping her voice relatively quiet.

Taylor froze for a moment, stiffened, before relaxing. With almost painful slowness, she gently began to lean into Sophia’s side, hips meeting hips, her cheek coming to rest on her shoulder. “You can,” she whispered quietly. “Just... don’t grab me, or go near my neck.”

Quietly nodding, Sophia snaked one arm around Taylor’s ribs, gently encircling it, cuffing her hand against her ribcage. Taylor stiffened again, but just as before, she gradually relaxed, her entire body loosening out into a lax, comfortable softness. She was warm, Sophia noticed, not too warm but... pleasantly warm, which was unusual, considering Taylor was very rarely anything but cold.

The television flickered, the opening scene of what by all accounts would be the incredibly-panned Blade Runner 5. Emma turned back to them, caught sight of Taylor, and smiled. Whether or not Taylor saw it, well, she gave no indication of it, but the smile on Emma’s face was warm, caring, something very difficult not to squirm beneath the focus of. Padding over silently, her socks muffling each step, Emma gently plopped herself down on the seat, hands folded in her lap, looking at the two of them.

“Mind if I join?”

Taylor slowly turned her head, Sophia catching the slow blinks out of the corner of her eye. She bit her lip, before nodding, and Emma, careful as she had been when handling Taylor, leaned in, encircling her arm just below where Sophia had placed hers. For the third time, Taylor stiffened, but this time she relaxed so much quicker, just about melted into a pile of completely limp muscles, her eyes hooding, a drowsy expression beginning to crawl over her face.

Sophia glanced away and towards the television just in time to see some nameless girl lose her head in a shower of gore across a neon sign written in Japanese. Taylor nestled in closer, almost nuzzling in against her nape, a very distracting thing, but not distracting enough to take away from the sheer, absurdist violence covering the screen.

“See?” Emma murmured, having at some point leaned into Taylor, one leg thrown over her legs while the rest of her clung to her almost like a koala. “Told you that you’d like it.”


	27. C-TRACK 3.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor struggles, Sophia makes a call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes a non-graphic depiction of a panic attack and references to abuse. It's not severe, or particularly detailed, but it is there.
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

The droning creak of the lunch bell rattled through the classroom, cutting Mr. Gladly off mid-sentence. Half of the class was already on their feet by the time he started trying to yell over the sound of it, one hand raising up as though to start including gestures, before the motion was aborted and his arm just dropped defeatedly to his side. With a sigh, not so much heard but rather seen in the rise of his chest and the slump of his shoulders, Mr. Gladly vaguely motioned towards the door.

Rising out of her seat, ignoring the low screech of the rubber pads against the floor, Taylor scooped her hand down, slipping fingers around the strap of her bag and hefted it up and over one shoulder. To her right, Emma was busy packing her ornate pencil case away, Taylor pausing just long enough to glance over the colourful, pleasantly-designed notes before Emma pointedly shut her notebook and slipped that into her bag as well.

“No homework!” Mr. Gladly called out, as though an afterthought, his head turned and voice pitched to carry towards one especially shifty bald guy scrambling out of the room.

“Does he ever assign homework?” Emma murmured distractedly, her head turning back and forth before focusing down on Sophia, who had been seated near the back of the class, and was currently busy fighting the zipper on her book bag.

Taylor shrugged, slipping her arm into the second strap, securing her backpack against her spine. The weight was pleasant, surprisingly enough, made her brain conjure up ideas and images of turtles in their shells. “No idea,” she confessed, trying to drum up any associated memories. Mr. Gladly had replaced the old World Issues teacher after their first year, in large part due to the fact that the man in question wrote a lengthy screed bemoaning America’s ‘fall into degeneracy’, and despite Winslow’s well-deserved reputation, the outcry against it - especially when it had ended up broadcasted on BBCNN, or the Brockton Bay Cable News Network - had been severe enough to warrant his dismissal from the position. “But I don’t think so, honestly.”

All things considered, Mr. Gladly fit easily into the role that all the other teachers did at Winslow. He was overworked, underpaid, with classes nearly twice the size of ones at Arcadia and with basically no spine to speak of. The students regularly walked over him, primarily because he was still trying to recapture what success she imagined he had as a high school student and regularly played up the ‘cool, down to earth’ teacher stereotype. He failed, of course, because Mr. Gladly was a man in his mid-to-late twenties who had already peaked, but for all that she could complain about him, she felt surprisingly ambivalent towards him. He wasn’t a _bad_ teacher, just a very shallow one, and it frankly beat having the person he replaced back.

“Mr. Gulliver always used to give homework,” Emma said, not quite sounding _disappointed_ , but rather more concerned than anything else. “Wouldn’t that be part of our grade? What if he’s just not bothering to give us any and the school board still tries to grade us on their completion?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.” Or, at least, she was relatively convinced about that much. If that was how the school board actually worked, they’d be receiving at least an _attempt_ at an education on par with Arcadia’s, and considering the English class was still using tests from the early 1940s, it either meant that Arcadia was significantly shittier than they made themselves out to be, or Winslow was just bad. Considering all the money they funnelled into Arcadia, she was pretty sure it was the latter.

“But what if it _is_?” Emma bemoaned.

“Then we’re all fucked,” Sophia interrupted, drawing Taylor’s attention back towards her. She was shifting on the balls of her heels, looking slightly antsy, her book bag - zipper still open, she noticed with no small amount of amusement - thrown over one shoulder, one hand clasped tightly around the strap. “So don’t think about it too much, you’re just going to make yourself anxious.”

Sighing, Emma started to make her way towards the door now that most of the class had rushed off for lunch. Taylor followed after her, glancing back for just long enough to make sure Sophia was doing the same. “I think Mr. Gladly does that by default,” Emma muttered, sounding almost mutinous.

“I do _what_ by default?” Mr. Gladly interrupted, smiling brightly at the three of them. Taylor could all but feel Sophia stiffen with frustration, while she personally just stared at him with limp, placid eyes, trying to inject as much neutrality into her face to keep the annoyance off of it.

Emma, on a dime, slipped into one of those masks of hers and smiled cheerfully back up at him, looking all the world like a doting, enamoured student. “You can teach just by being in the room!” She lied brightly, Sophia choking on a snort and devolving into a short burst of coughs.

Mr. Gladly’s face lifted, looking almost like he was _preening_. “Why thank you, Ms. Barnes,” he said, voice pitched to sound smooth and suave and just not quite managing it. “You can always count on Mr. G, you know that? You two as well, if you need anything, I am here to listen to your issues or offer tissues.”

Emma’s smile visibly strained around the edges, going plasticky.

Glancing up at the clock above his desk, Mr. Gladly tutted. “I won’t keep the three of you from your lunch any longer. I’ll see you again on Wednesday.”

“Thanks, _Mr. G_!” The last two words were spoken through Emma’s teeth, not that Mr. Gladly actually seemed to notice. Turning back to both herself and Sophia, Emma tilted her head towards the door and then started power-walking her way towards it at a speed that was _just_ fast enough to seem urgent, but not quite so fast that it made her look desperate or particularly hurried.

Following after Emma, if without matching her pace, Taylor stepped out of the classroom and into the hallway and was, almost immediately, reminded that Winslow was far over its original capacity. As far as she could tell, Winslow was a school built to house about 800 to 900 students, and at its current population there was about 1100 students all told. The halls were packed, a constant current of moving bodies and physical impacts, not even minutes into the lunch period and already she could see a few guys wearing red and green purposefully slamming their shoulders into one guy wearing red and black. Technically, gang colours _were_ banned at Winslow, but like most things, the administration literally couldn’t suspend people fast enough to actually deal with the issue, meaning nobody ever enforced it.

Which, speaking of the lunch period. “I need to go to my locker!” She shouted. Emma glanced back from where she was heading, which was to the locker she shared with Sophia. Taylor, technically, used to have a locker pretty close to Emma’s in the first year wing, but with her second year it had been moved to the second floor and out of the way, near some of the classrooms they used for storage. The only upside was that she didn’t have to share it with anyone, as it was otherwise more than a little annoying to get to.

“Want me to come with?” Emma shouted back, the crowd parting as she finally maneuvered her way across the hallway and to her locker, Sophia sidling up behind her, glancing over her shoulder as Emma quickly twisted the knob of her lock, working it open within a few seconds.

Sparing another glance around the hall, the constant mush of people, the little gaps she could probably get to on her own but would be difficult with a group... “Nah.”

Emma glanced back, pursed her lips, but then shrugged in acquiescence. “We’ll be in the cafeteria, alright?”

“I’ll see you in like five minutes,” Taylor confirmed, waving her fingers at Sophia.

The short, barely-heard “be safe” from Sophia made her face burn.

* * *

Hooking her index finger beneath the loop of her locker, Taylor gave the case of the combination lock a sharp tug, freeing the shackle with a click. Twisting the lock around, she threaded the metal loop out of the handle, reaching out with her other hand to pull the door open. There wasn’t much to see in her locker, she’d never really gotten over the distrust of them after both the incident with Greg and, before that, the one incident in middle school, but that didn’t mean she didn’t use it at all.

Slipping out of the straps of her bag, Taylor hauled it around and dropped it on her feet, crouching down a little to quickly pull the zipper open. Dropping her lock onto the ground for a moment, she reached in and pulled out her Algebra and World Issues textbooks, stacking them on top of one another before dropping them unceremoniously onto the floor of her locker. Reaching beneath them, she gave a good hard tug on the English textbook beneath it, nearly twice the thickness of any textbook she’d had the displeasure of being forced to carry around for hours every day. There was an ongoing joke among those in the AP English class with her that you could probably kill someone with the textbook, a joke that had become significantly less funny over the last couple of months, considering the circumstances.

Sighing, she started the arduous process of feeding the textbook into a place that didn’t really have the space for it. She had to shove aside her lunch bag, take her phone out for just a moment even going so far as to take the hoodie she’d haphazardly stuffed into the bag something like _two months ago_ and fold it back up so that she could, with great relish, finally fit the damn thing in there without it squishing something essential or sticking out the top of her goddamn bag. She even managed to slip her phone back in without worrying that it was about to be crushed between her lunch bag and the massive brick that was her AP English textbook.

“Been a while.”

Taylor flinched, jerking forward and nearly crumpling into her locker. Her fingers went taut around the textbook, knuckles pressing against the underside of her skin, pulling them painfully tight. Swallowing dryly, she lashed one hand out, snatching the lock from the ground and working to shakily zip the top of her bag close.

“I know you probably don’t want to talk to me,” Tammi said, her voice too close. She could almost feel it breathing down her neck, feel her stare. “But we’re going to have to.”

 _No, we don’t_ , some part of her murmured. With her zipper closed, Taylor closed one hand around the top of her bag’s strap, rising from her squat and stepping away, jerking the door to her locker shut with just too much force to be casual, the sharp _bang_ of metal clattering against metal nearly making her fumble the damn lock. Fuck.

“Dating a black girl, huh?” Nothing about Tammi’s voice was pleasant, or kind, or even really just _curious_. Malice - how hadn’t she ever noticed it before? She was stupid, stupid, fucking _so stupid_ \- thick, rotten and so very easy to notice if she just stopped and listened, listened to how her words took on a sneer-like quality. “Bit stereotypical, isn’t that?”

Fastening her lock back through the handle, Taylor blocked her presence out, hauling her bag up with one hand and dropping it around her shoulder. Turning away from where Tammi’s voice had come from, she made it one step before a hand reached out and closed around her bicep.

Taylor froze, breath catching in her throat, rising like bile.

“Goddamn would you just fucking _stop_ for a second? Fucking hell,” Tammi snarled out, her grip tightening, the pressure in Taylor’s throat getting thicker. “Isn’t it about time you stopped this bullshit? I get it, you’re like a pampered little princess fucking a black guy because she knows it’ll upset her father, but this has been going on for too long.”

Taylor said nothing, resisting the tense, knotted urge in her body to start thrashing and screaming and not stop until either she gave or Tammi did.

Tammi scowled, expression darkening with each second of prolonged silence. Taylor did nothing, just stared forward, towards the exit, towards where she could escape, towards where she couldn’t reach her or touch her or _choke her or_ —

“Brent misses you.”

Taylor jerked harshly, tearing her arm free of Tammi’s grip and stumbling forward, clattering against the lockers. Each breath was an effort, choking in her throat, coming out as gasping, harsh wheezes. Glancing back, she saw Tammi looking at her hand, then back up at her, something like shock melting away into fury. _It wasn’t hard to see how she and Brent were related,_ some hysterical part of her brain pointed out. _They look so similar when they’re angry._

“Dammit Taylor, why can’t you just fucking chill out?” Tammi finally said, none of the rage on her face carrying across in her voice. It sounded blank, empty, monotone. “You’re always doing this, freaking out because of jokes or whatever the fuck else. You’re like a goddamn _rat_.”

Taylor took a step away, Tammi took a step forward. The rage on her face shifted, grew more focused, and for all that she spoke robotically, without any real inflection, every other part of her body _screamed_ violence. Another step, and just the same, Tammi following after her. A third step, then a fourth, and Taylor found herself walking, then nearly running, as Tammi very abruptly started closing the distance between them.

“Taylor,” her voice was a warning, another thing she could project well, just like Brent. Just like before. “Taylor _stop_ , we have to talk about this—”

Fingers glanced off of her elbow and, more reaction than intent, she pitched around, swinging her hand out harshly, fingers clenched into a fist. Knuckles met the hard flesh of a jaw, sending Tammi sprawling back with a startled shriek of pain, landing on her back, one hand coming up to shakily cup the right side of her face. Taylor froze, her knuckles ached, the forming bruise pulsing painfully to the rhythm of her heartbeat.

Tammi stared on, looked up at her with something like shock on her face. “You—”

She didn’t wait to hear the rest of it. She just ran.

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

“Did you try texting her?” Emma asked.

Sophia glanced at her phone for the fifth time. “More than once.”

Emma sighed out, running a hand through her hair. “Fuck it. Better safe than sorry, let’s try to find her.”

Sophia sure as fuck wasn’t going to object to that. Taylor’s ‘five minutes’ had become ten, then fifteen. It was anyone’s guess where she’d gone, but considering Taylor had been doing a lot fucking better, good enough that she was pretty damn confident she wasn’t a flight risk, something about the entire situation _reeked_. Climbing to a stand, Sophia kicked the seat back beneath the table, stopping only long enough for Emma to grab her purse before making her way through the cafeteria.

“I think something might’ve gone wrong,” Emma admitted quietly, just barely audible beneath the low murmur of conversation from nearby tables. “She would’ve told us if she was delayed or something, right?”

Routing her way away from the table with all the skinheads - passing them by was just asking to be tripped or spit on - and instead suffering beneath the curious stares of all the nerds, Greg - who she could now identify if only from his blonde bowl cut and fervent obsession with some sort of boring card game - included, it was a mercifully short sort of torture and they were out of the too-cramped, too-noisy, smelly fucking piece of shit that the school considered clean enough to eat in.

Truly, Winslow was the pinnacle of garbage. Couldn’t even bother to make sure the cafeteria didn’t smell like milk that had gone off sometime in the 1990s.

Breathing in the first breath free of sweat and unidentified sour smells, Sophia relished in it for the few seconds she had to spare before quickly glancing in Emma’s direction. “Where do we want to search first?”

“Lockers,” Emma decided confidently, and Sophia could track that logic. It helped that, aside from that one place on the third floor, Sophia had no real idea where Taylor might go if she wanted to be alone and self-destructive in Winslow, that was definitely more Emma’s thing. She should still probably look into it though, all things aside. It would be really counterproductive if the one day Emma was sick or something Taylor went AWOL or something like that.

Breaking into a crisp walk, Sophia followed after Emma as they made the long and arduous walk between the center of the building towards the left wing. Winslow was built in a rough ‘H’ shape, with the cafeteria in the center and three total floors, with stairs on each end of each wing. It was a simple design, and not particularly maze-like, but with all the abandoned classrooms and one out-of-duty stairwell - water damage, because what _wasn’t_ waterlogged nowadays - it was more difficult to find your way around in the building than it had any real right to be.

“Sophia,” Emma hissed, jerking to a stop. It was only the sticky treads of her shoes - when had she stepped in juice? Ugh, she was going to have to _clean_ them now, goddammit that was gross - that stopped her from bowling into and probably right over Emma. Glancing towards where she was pointing, Sophia blinked. It was a girl with long blonde hair, down to about the middle of her spine, with off-gray eyes and a face twisted into an almost perpetual sneer. A bruise had started to darken over the right side of her jaw, a purplish mark that stretched from the space just before her chin to where her jaw curved up into her ear.

“Who?” Sophia asked, keeping her voice low.

Emma glanced back, giving her a bewildered look. “That’s Tammi Pierce, Brent’s cousin. She’s part of the Empire’s presence in Winslow nowadays, but before she used to just be Taylor’s friend.”

Focusing back on Tammi, Sophia watched as she stomped harshly down the stairs, clutching her face in one hand while the other sat balled up at her side into a fist. Her face oscillated between that sneer, a genuinely pained expression, and rage.

Wow, that sure was a stable fucking neo-nazi right there. Great. “She won’t shoot up the school or anything, right?”

Emma clicked her tongue. “No, but she did just come from the second floor.”

The pieces clicked. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” Emma breathed, sounding nervous. Picking up the pace again, though this time she was literally just shy of running, Emma made her way towards the stairs, Sophia managing to keep pace with her. “I would be surprised if Taylor actually hit her, but fuck knows with that group, it could be related whether or not Taylor was the one to do it.”

Jogging up the steps, Sophia followed after Emma as she made a sharp right-hand turn onto a long-abandoned hallway. Some of the tiles below her feet bulged, set out of place, likely from water damage if the massive stretch of the discoloured ceiling above said water tiles was any indication. Personally, she was just glad it wasn’t _still_ leaking, not that it was a great look for a school to resemble a building caught in the wake of a Leviathan attack.

Emma’s pace slowed to a halt, stopping at locker 288. She quickly glanced around, even stretching up onto her tippy-toes to glance through the windows of the locked classroom doors, before shaking her head. “Not here. Lets try the hallway directly across from this one.”

Turning around and walking back the way they came, they passed the stairs by this time, continuing along the hallway and into a slightly _less_ fucked wing on the second floor. This one, at least, had no outward signs of water damage, and most of the classrooms even seemed to be ones people were actually using, if the way they were decorated with posters and whatever else was any indication. “Where’s this, anyway?”

Emma didn’t even glance back, scanning from door to door, her eyes briefly catching on the stairs at the far other end. “AP classrooms,” she said after a moment. “Taylor takes AP English, the school let her stay in it even after she nearly flunked, and I _think_ AP chemistry and AP marine biology.”

“Why are they offering _marine biology_ ,” Sophia started, pausing to pick up her pace as Emma started marching her way down the hallway. “On advanced levels, but not like, fucking fixing the hallways or some shit?”

Emma shrugged. “Winslow just always had AP marine biology. I think they’re only really keeping it for the novelty of having it.”

“Why is _Taylor_ taking those AP courses, then?”

“She wanted to go into journalism, nature journalism specifically. I think she wanted to do stuff relating to conservation.” Emma’s voice paused but her walking didn’t. The stairwell was getting ever-closer, and just out of the corner of her eye, she could just barely make out Taylor’s absurdly red book bag. Shit. “She gave up on it when she started dating Brent,” she continued, finally, her voice a bit hollow, her pace hurrying to the point where Sophia had to start lengthening her strides into more of a jog to keep up. “But she kept the classes because she enjoys learning, _shit—_ ”

Passing through the threshold and into the stairwell just seconds after Emma, Sophia was met with an unpleasantly familiar sight. Taylor’s bag, strewn over the railing, not opened, just left to hang, while the girl herself had her back pressed against the wall. Nobody else was around, but her face was in her hands and her breathing came out as raspy wheezes, short choked-off noises of panic. She looked physically fine, no bruises, nothing that would indicate she’d been hurt outside of the swelling purple smear across her knuckles, which meant she probably had punched Tammi in the face, not that Sophia was going to begrudge her for it.

“Taylor?” Emma called out gently, still at the top of the stairs. Below them Taylor flinched, head jerking up to stare at them, her eyes dry but bloodshot, little red marks around her eyebrows from where she’d dug her nails into skin. “Taylor, hon, are you okay?”

Taylor shook her head sharply.

“Do you need me to call the therapist for you?” Sophia found herself asking, speaking before Emma could continue. Taylor stared up at her blankly, as though she hadn’t quite expected it, before finally nodding.

Sophia glanced at Emma, who glanced back, her face pursed and tense.

Emma breathed out, turning her head back towards Taylor. “Alright, your bag isn’t too close to you. Is being close to you bad?”

Taylor paused, struggled for a moment, her fingers going to her knees, tensing down. “No,” she finally rasped, voice hoarse and wet. “No, I—I, just, no grabbing me. Please.”

“I’ll get the phone,” Sophia murmured. “You go down there, okay?”

Emma nodded. “Excuse for if we miss classes?”

“I can call it a Wards emergency. Blackwell will let it go if I say that.”

“Alright.” Turning back towards Taylor, Emma leaned over the railing, smiling sadly down at her. “I’m going to approach now, okay? Tell me or show me if I upset you, alright?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Sophia just barely saw Taylor nod. Emma descended the stairs one at a time, slow and careful, while she made her way towards the abandoned bag near the end of the first flight of stairs. Taking hold of one of the red straps that had been left curled around one of those weird round fixtures at the end of the railings. Pulling it up and over, Sophia wobbled a bit - to her own shame, frankly - at the sheer fucking weight of it, because of course Taylor would fill her fragile-looking cloth backpack full of rocks.

Plopping it down near her feet, Sophia felt a short pang of jealousy when the zipper didn’t fight her attempts to open it. Inside was a truly gigantic textbook, like unwieldy large, bordering on dictionary thick, a carefully-folded hoodie, a lunch bag, and her phone. Collecting the phone in her hand, Sophia tapped the screen a few times, only to be met with a lock screen. Drawing herself to a stand, Sophia glanced over the railing, catching sight of Emma holding Taylor oh-so-gently, her curly black hair pressed into her nape as her shoulders shook, Emma making low shushing noises.

“Taylor?” Sophia asked, trying to keep her voice level, calm, nothing in it besides comfort. Taylor startled a bit, then relaxed, glancing up at her with wet, red eyes. “What’s your password?”

“Prospero,” she rasped back.

Not commenting on the password despite her confusion on the matter, Sophia tapped the word in and got through the lock screen without any other muss or fuss. More than familiar with the design of concealed PRT phones, she tabbed through the contacts, found the therapist’s emergency line, and paused, just short of calling. “Do you want me to call and then give the phone to you, or do you want me to call, explain some of the situation, and then give it to you?”

Taylor, still staring up at her, went tense. “Second,” she murmured tiredly.

Sophia shut her eyes, breathed out, and felt some of the pressure begin to abate from her head, leaving behind a faint ache. “Right,” she exhaled, more of a breath than it was a word. Tapping the call button, she brought the phone up to her ear, pinching it between her shoulder and her head, the dial-tone filling her head in all of its dull, crackly glory.

* * *

Emma’s head was warm on her shoulder, though the posture was more than a little stiff. The bench they were sitting on was hard and inflexible, one of the several pieces of furniture strewn throughout the building made by students. Behind her, Sophia could just barely make out Taylor’s voice, distant and rebounding off of the walls of the bathroom, escaping out through the open doorway.

Staring up at the clock, she couldn’t really help the pang of disquiet at it being nearly 2:30 in the afternoon. Getting Taylor on the phone had taken a while, and even after it had taken her even more time to open up, to broach what had happened to her. The bathroom had been a compromise, in a sense, it gave her the illusion of privacy - seeing as they had removed the doors to said bathrooms, replacing them with dividing walls that stopped people from seeing directly into the bathrooms - while also keeping her within sprinting distance of both herself and Emma.

“The Tempest is her favourite play,” Emma said abruptly, startling Sophia out of her thoughts. Glancing down at her, Emma didn’t return the gesture, staring forward at the wall blankly. “You looked curious about the password.”

“That’s one of... Oscar Wilde’s?”

Emma _did_ glance her way at that, and her expression was less than impressed. “Shakespeare’s,” she corrected, looking back towards the wall. “The duke in it, his name is Prospero. She has a movie in her house somewhere, a version of The Tempest with Prospero played by a girl going by _Prospera_. Blonde-haired, pretty face, it’s from some studio in LA that sent the copies out to universities on a whim to see if they might be used in comparative studies I think? Her Mom brought one home because Taylor liked the play so much, she was obsessed with it for ages.”

Sophia blinked. “Huh.”

“Sorry, I hate sitting in silence in situations like these,” Emma confessed, a bit of a breathless quality to her voice. “I’m just... worried. So I’m babbling.”

“It’s fine, Emma.”

She shook her head. “It isn’t, this isn’t about me, it’s about Taylor. I just, I’m _worried_. She freaked out, I’m... I mean I am used to seeing her like that, I just wish... that, I didn’t have to.”

Struggling to find the words for a moment, Sophia glanced back up at the ceiling. “Emma, healing is slow. Especially for those of us like me and Taylor. The wounds linger, and they can be set off at a moment’s notice with almost no warning.” She swallowed thickly, trying to banish the dryness from her mouth. “It took me years to feel comfortable being in the same space as men older than me or in a position of power. It’s... not going to be quick, Emma, but Taylor is getting better.”

Emma made a noise, helpless and low and pained but not disagreeing. “Yeah, she wouldn’t’ve ever hit Tammi like that before.”

A snort escaped her before she could put a lid on the amusement. Despite the circumstances, seeing a neo-nazi with a bruised jaw was always _somewhat_ funny. “She’ll be wearing that bruise for a while, yeah.”

“Tammi deserves it,” Emma said, her voice nearly a hiss. “I—just, one of these days, I’m going to get Taylor’s permission, and I’m going to tell you about her past. I don’t think she’s comfortable talking about it, but she might be for me, and... well. You won’t see half of the school in the same light again.”

It wouldn’t surprise her, but after this last month? Not a whole lot really could. “How?”

Emma’s face twisted, scowled. “Cults,” she spat with no small amount of venom. “Or at least things very close to it.”

The conversation died from there, fading back into muted silence, Emma’s head warm and heavy on her shoulder, helping to keep her grounded. Her brain had a lot of things going on inside of it, a lot of conflicting, twisted little emotions and impulses, urges to do things that she had long learned to cope with. The constant urge to check her surroundings wasn’t something she ever ignored, but the one telling her to find Tammi and shove her down a flight of stairs _was_ , because regardless of how cathartic it would be, it would do nothing but get her into shit. That and probably get a bunch of the local Hitler Youth chapter on her ass, which she wasn’t particularly fond of.

Taylor’s voice died off after another few minutes, the sound of her ending the call ringing out into the hollow, empty hallway. Emma stirred, pushing herself up from where she was leaning, her head turning around just in time to catch Taylor stepping out of the bathroom. She looked better, less likely to curl in on herself, but there was something very worn down about her, a sort of ragged fatigue.

“Taylor?” Emma asked gently, voice quiet.

Taylor shifted on her heels, fingers collecting in front of her, tugging at one another. A sign of nervousness, she remembered, her mother did the same thing. “I uhm, I’m better now.” There was a pause, Taylor visibly collecting herself. “But, uhm, Dr. Castaneda said I should probably explain what happened.”

“Only if you think you’re okay,” Emma said quickly.

Taylor shook her head, jaw firming up, tightening. “I don’t think I can keep running away from my problems.”

“You can take your time to handle them, though,” Sophia found herself interjecting, echoing the words of her own therapist, the one she’d been with for close to three years now.

Taylor stopped bristling at that, body going a bit looser, eyes lidding gently. “Tammi cornered me,” she started slowly, legs twitching as she started to pace back and forth. “When I was at my locker. She grabbed me, which is, as far as the therapists can tell, triggering to me. Sets off PTSD, I think. I don’t know. Then she tried to tell me, uhm, Brent missed me, and I lashed out. I hit her.”

A pause.

“My knuckles hurt,” she added weakly, voice wobbling.

“Then I ran, and... I don’t really remember much before you guys got there. Just that I had to get the bag off of me, it was too heavy, and then I... squished myself up against the wall, in the stairwell.” Taylor’s throat bobbed. “Thank you for helping me out of that. I’m not sure when I would’ve... come out of it on my own.”

“I’ll always do that for you,” Emma said, and there was nothing but the brutal, honest truth in her voice.

Sophia stirred, flexing her fingers. “I’ll be here for you as much as I can,” she said, not quite able to put that intent into her voice, it wasn’t _her_ , she didn’t say things like that, but if the way that Taylor relaxed, smiled a fragile little smile at the two of them, she probably got that.

“I was afraid,” she murmured after another moment. “I... uhm. Tammi once used a ‘talk’ to let Brent corner me, you know? And I was just worried that he’ll start approaching me again.”

“Taylor,” Emma drawled slowly, something satisfied audible in the tone of her voice. “Brent has far too much shit on his plate to have time to harass you, and if he did, I’m pretty sure everyone in the school would step in. Nobody likes him, Taylor, he would be setting himself up to get beaten if he tried to force his way into your personal space.”

Taylor relaxed more at those words, visibly slumped. “Yeah,” she whispered quietly. “I’m, uhm, I’m off school for the rest of the day. I’m not sure if you two are going back?”

Sophia spared another glance at the clock. “It would be legitimately less counterproductive to just leave than to try to go back to class at this point.”

“What about absences?” Taylor asked, her voice almost panicked.

Sophia just smiled. “Blackwell would sell her soul to keep us here. Don’t worry your head, okay? I’m gonna pop my head into the office, tell them it was ‘a thing’, and then leave.”

That brought the other girl up short. “That seems a bit... corrupt.”

Sophia rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and did her best to put the complete lack of fucks into her shrug. “It’s Winslow,” she reminded. “I think you’re allowed to be on the beneficial end of corruption for something like this.”

Taylor shifted on her feet, fidgeting a little, but finally relaxed. “Alright.”

“The office, then?” Emma cut in, pushing herself up from the bench and onto her feet, arms stretched above her head with a catlike arch to her spine.

Sophia clambered to her feet with, frankly, considerably less grace, grunting an affirmative. Glancing back towards Taylor, she extended her hand, a quiet, unspoken question. After a few moments, Taylor stepped forward once, then twice, reaching out to take her hand into her own, fingers tangling together, pleasant even despite the sweat on both of their palms.

“The office,” Taylor confirmed.


	28. C-TRACK 3.4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor and Sophia meet a celebrity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Lyrisey for doing the beta work on this. Appreciate it lots!

The nervousness was back. It was hard to explain how it felt, somewhere between giddiness and wariness, an erratic buzz of energy that sat just below her skin. It made her want to twitch, made it somehow even harder to focus on anything at once. Her brain was firing on all cylinders despite a complete and total lack of things to actually use that built up energy on, and it was driving her, frankly, fucking up the wall.

It had been a week since the incident with Tammi, seven whole days where nothing had happened. She hadn’t seen Tammi again, hadn’t seen any of _Tammi’s_ friends either, or her family members, of which there were more than a few scattered throughout Winslow. Before today, she’d had the option of dumping that energy into Tinkering, on working on the first prototypes, then practical versions of basic tech she’d need if she wanted to do her job. Wards weren’t really supposed to get into fights, it wasn’t a role they were intended to play, but then the only cities worse than Brockton in terms of cape conflicts were the ones further south or firmly in Elite control.

But now she couldn’t. The return to tinkering had been at once liberating and stifling. It had been a reminder of what she’d done, every piece of tech she put together a familiar rhythm her brain attributed to the creation of the rocket javelins, of sharp darts with odd effects. It was, frankly, difficult starting out; she had limited experience with spherical projectiles and only a little more than that when it came to nets, though her power leapt at the chance to explore them. Still, she had to start over from the very beginning when it came to their designs, the aerodynamics; there was very little she could translate between her past equipment to the new stuff they had her make, almost nothing at all in truth.

In the end, she’d managed to make a handful of pretty basic gear. Her main focus now was to get to work on another exoskeleton, in large part due to her difficulties stemming from its absence. She had fallen into a habit of building heavy and crude, relying not on modified tinker alloys which could withstand the brute force of some of the effects she’d woven into her equipment, but rather on more steel, thicker components, things which could withstand the force through sheer bulk alone. Without her exoskeleton, that same design principle became a trap; she’d made a few spheres, just to see what she could do with the materials they had on hand, and ended up making something twice as heavy as an Olympic grade shotput and had been completely fucking unable to chuck the thing.

So, new. New gear, new design principles, new goals and focuses and _review boards_. A lot of things were new, some of which she had misgivings about, but it wasn’t all negative, not truly.

Still, she couldn’t tinker. Not today, maybe tomorrow if she’d have time after school, but definitely not today. She had to work with what she had, what the board approved, because she had to go _out_ there, had to patrol. First patrols, she had been told, were mostly PR stunts, she’d be on a safe route in a safe area with more than a few watchers to make sure she wasn’t attacked again. Sophia was going to be on the patrol with her, though she hadn’t a clue who the Protectorate member accompanying the two of them would be, and still, she should be safe.

Like she had been safe at her reveal.

Breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, Taylor hunched over the table, trying to force her breathing back into a comfortable rhythm. It _ached_ , she hated feeling this nervous, this _skittish_ about something that was otherwise rote and normal. The Empire had backed off significantly after the failed attempt at killing her, there was no reason to assume she’d step outside and get shot in the head, and _yet_ , and _fucking yet_ —

Reaching out, she closed her fingers around one of the balls, tried to focus on the texture of it instead of the keening in her head. These were to be her main weapon for the near future, baseball-sized volleyballs, made primarily out of a dense rubber with a small metal core in the center. It, for all intents and purposes, looked identical to a volleyball, if significantly smaller, with all the same bumps and grooves, it even felt a bit like it, though it was considerably denser, as one would expect seeing as it wasn’t inflatable. She had enough room for eight on her person, though she had made about sixteen after getting the core design down pat. It was just _barely_ tinkertech, in the realm of her sharper darts, the rubber had a quality to it that she’d managed to work into it with some trial-and-error which meant it hardened when put under pressure. It had been, frankly, one of the few design ideas she’d managed to carry over from her darts and it was the _only_ volleyball with a design principle from her past weaponry that the review board had okayed for use, and even then it had been pretty touch-and-go for the first half of the demonstration. The end result was that, instead of bouncing away, the ball dumped all of the energy it produced upon hitting something _into_ the hit itself by hardening, near-perfect inelastic collision, basically full momentum transfer, really.

They were quick to make, _easy_ to make, even thinking about them now brought out the blueprint, made the exact specifics she’d need to make them ring loudly in her head like an intrusive thought.

But she couldn’t tinker.

Reaching up to comb a hand through her hair, Taylor managed to bang her palm against her reinforced hood, cussing sharply beneath her breath. The changing room was empty for all but her, people were _waiting_ on her to get over her nerves and go do the thing everyone else had to, that was part of her job and here she was playing with her fucking volleyballs like a stubborn _child_. She had a job to do, a duty to fulfil, a nervousness to overcome one way or the other and standing around and worrying would do jack fucking shit.

Taylor hefted the ball in a shaky hand, tucking it into her belt next to the seven that had come before. She glanced off towards one of the numerous full-length mirrors they’d left around the changing room, and it didn’t look too bad. They almost looked like giant beads threaded through a string, cinched around her waist. The nets she had on hand weren’t bad either, four bundles of high-tensile thread connected to tiny metal spheres hooked just below her belt, closer to her rear than they were her front.

This was all she had. She had to go on a patrol, had to go out, had to _risk it again_ and this was all she had. She knew, rationally - and she was getting better at that, better at acknowledging her emotions without dissociating from them - that she was safe, that they would guard her with their lives, partially to prevent her mother from pulling her out of the program or shipping her out of a city that might very well need her help. They would do a lot to ensure her first patrol went right, more than they did for her reveal, which while there was a present chance at her being attacked during it, nobody had expected three capes, nobody had prepared for it.

Her side twinged, phantom itches that had long faded, but still reared their head when she thought about it. Pain was difficult for her, it cowed her, it made her terrified and she hated what it did to her head. She’d do anything to make the pain stop, anything at all, and that was incredibly disquieting. If she got hurt again, if she was tortured, attacked, what would she do? Would she lash out? Hurt herself hitting someone? Run? Just cry?

A knock on the door startled her, snapped her from the spiral. Taylor glanced down at her hands, winced at the sight of the white-knuckled grip she had on the metal table, and felt her face cramp into something pained as she pried her fingers free, each digit stiff and her palm aching something fierce. She flipped her hand over, pursed her lips, no blood, but the red mark where the edge of the table had dug in would probably bruise. Great. She was off to such a fucking _great_ start—

Another knock, louder. “Ta—Volley?” Sophia’s voice, she could deal with that. Sophia was safe, she smelled safe, her hugs were safe, her kisses were safe and—no, she had to focus. “It’s time to go, are you okay?”

Taylor swallowed, her lips dry, her throat a desert. Pushing herself away from the table and tucking her hands into the pockets of her jacket, she made her way towards the door, trying to work the unsteadiness out of her legs.

“Volley?” Sophia repeated, voice a bit more frantic. “Volley? C’mon, I need you to say something, if you don’t I’m going to have to—”

Taylor closed her hand around the knob, twisted and pulled, revealing Sophia. She was in full costume, intimidating and swathed in dark colours, with an urban-camo style cape and hood. Her head turned, and though she couldn’t even see her eyes behind the lenses in her mask, she could’ve sworn she saw relief in there somewhere. “Sorry,” she provided after another moment. “Got distracted.”

Sophia twitched. “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice pitched low, almost a murmur, words just for her.

 _I’m fine_ was on her tongue in seconds, her brain swelling with the words, a mantra forming in her skull. It would be so easy to lie, to say she was okay, that nothing was wrong, that she wasn’t freaking out because she might be hurt. She even opened her mouth to say it, to lie to her girlfriend’s face, before the words guttered and died in her throat. She felt herself slump, one gloveless hand coming up to press the burny ache that stretched across her palm into the cool metal of the doorframe. “No,” she finally admitted. “I’m really nervous.”

Sophia paused, and god was it difficult reading her expressions when she was veiled in that cloak of hers. Her costume made her bulkier, more intimidating, and though she knew well enough that Sophia was more than average in terms of how athletic her body was, the costume did a lot to reinforce that. But, then, that wasn’t what she should be focusing on, she was getting her head tied around in knots about completely inconsequential shit that she could handle _when she wasn’t about to go out on a patrol_.

Fuck, she really should look into an ADHD diagnosis. She had the therapist for it now.

Gloved fingers tucked into the ones she’d pressed into the doorframe, prying them free ever-so-gently. She hadn’t even noticed she had tensed her hand, had gripped down on something again, until Sophia was gently drawing her hand down, turning it over so that she could stare at the bruising welt she’d dug into her own hand. One padded thumb smoothed over the wound, the skin oversensitive, buzzing.

“Where’s your gloves?” Sophia said, still murmuring, her voice more gentle than Taylor had really expected it to be.

Her legs fidgeted, the energy crackling and popping near her heel, making it jog up and then down. “On the table,” she admitted slowly, trying not to shudder when Sophia dragged her thumb back across the darkening blemish. She could already see the sickly yellows beginning to settle in around the grooves in her palm, the low ache that radiated out from it and into her fingers.

Without further comment, Sophia turned her hand back around and laced their fingers together. Gently, with the sort of care that Emma usually was the one showing, Sophia began walking her way towards the table, dragging her along with her. With her free hand, she gathered the two gloves and dragged them closer to her, dropping them for a moment if only to pull the chair out from beneath the table. Sophia glanced up at her, her mask covering whatever expression was on it, her body language similarly unreadable. “Sit.”

Her brain made an unwelcome comparison to being a dog. Taylor dutifully ignored it and lowered herself down into the chair, her hand still held firmly in Sophia’s.

Barely a second later, Sophia began feeding each of her digits into the confines of the glove. Index first, then middle, then ring and pinky, before finally squishing her thumb to complete the process and dragging the fabric up, the tips of her fingers sticking out where the gloves ended. Her hand felt raw, each touch amplified, and Taylor couldn’t help but glance away, something like heat flooding to her face.

“Other hand,” Sophia requested, and like a dog - her brain had to _stop_ \- she complied.

Sophia worked in silence, gently coaxing her hand finger-by-finger into the confines of the glove. Taylor could hear her breathing, the steady, deep rhythm, she could almost imagine the flutter of her pulse. She felt herself calm, felt herself relax and grow less stiff, the glove slipping on easier without the tightened muscles. Her eyes lidded, and something in her _soothed_ , didn’t quite numb, but grew so much less raw.

“I was nervous on my first patrol too,” Sophia started, still working to slot her ring finger into place in the glove. “I was an angry kid when I started out, freshly traumatized and obsessed with proving that I was strong enough to burden it. Therapy had just started, I wanted to hurt something, not to help anyone. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I was a black girl in Brockton Bay and if anyone _knew_ that, well, the edgy new Ward might get the shit beaten out of her. I didn’t really fear the pain, or the violence, and you’re probably different on that end.”

A pause, Sophia rubbing circles in the joint where her thumb met her hand, coaxing it until, finally, it slipped into the glove and into position.

“I was terrified of being _defeated_ , of being _weaker_ ,” she said, speaking with some inflection, but not much. “Of someone having something _over_ me, something they could use or laugh about. I hated my first patrol, it was all PR, no fights, just being led around by Challenger and the oldest Ward at the time like some sort of show dog, or a doll. But I was safe, and Taylor?”

She glanced up, tried to look into the eyes of Sophia’s mask, still so opaque, so hidden. She wanted to reach out, to tangle her hands in her hair, move the mask aside and press her mouth into Sophia’s, if only to alleviate the concern, to get rid of the warm fluttering in her chest that wasn’t altogether negative. She felt her fingers, despite the gloves between them, tangle in with Sophia’s, felt Sophia squeeze her fingers tight.

“You’re going to be safe, too. I promise.”

* * *

January had decided its last day would not be a particularly hospitable one. The wind bit at the parts of her left exposed by her costume, cold gusts scraped like nails across her person, not quite penetrating her layers but still managing to leave her chilly. Sophia, to her side, had tucked her cloak a bit around her front to give herself a little cover from the wind.

“When’s our escort going to be here?” Taylor found herself asking, pitching her voice over the sharp blasts of wind that curled off of the overly tall PRT building.

Sophia shrugged. “Didn’t tell me either. They didn’t tell me for my first patrol, but I think that’s because it’s supposed to be a surprise.”

Rolling her eyes up, Taylor was glad that the visor kept curious onlookers from seeing her mild frustration with the loops the Protectorate twisted itself into sometimes. Seriously, why couldn’t things just be _normal_ with these people? They already had to deal with a lot of paperwork, what if she didn't get along with the Protectorate member and they didn’t know? Yeesh. “I’m cold,” she complained, deciding against voicing her thoughts.

Sophia tilted her head to the side, still looking stoic and broad and _warm_ and—no. She was pretty bad about that, today, kept getting distracted. “You’ll mostly get used to it,” Sophia finally said, speaking with a voice that was more resigned than encouraging, or particularly sympathetic. “It just takes a while.”

“How long is ‘a while’?” Taylor needled, trying to put a bit of humour into her voice.

Sophia made a noise in the back of her throat. “About four years?” Warmth trickled into her voice, a wry humour behind it all that made Taylor’s heart give another lurch, made her want to bury her face in Sophia’s shoulder.

“It took me about five years to get used to wearing a costume in the winter,” a new voice interrupted. More on instinct alone, Taylor swung around, briefly consumed by confusion when she caught sight of nobody, before her eyes tracked up. Floating in the air, a man with wavy brown hair, a square jaw, a blue-and-white costume with domino mask and skin-tight bodysuit, designed with fire-like decals where the blue around his shoulders and arms met the white that covered his chest, smiled down on them, his face filled with genuine warmth. It was an iconic look, a look most if not all kids in America knew of. She had a fucking _poster_ of it.

It was Legend.

Holy shit.

Taylor choked on what she was going to say, choked on the fucking air for all it was worth. Sophia seemed as shell-shocked, her fingers loosening from her cloak and letting it fall with a numb sort of shock to them. Legend, to his credit, just smiled wider, showing a set of straight white teeth, a low chuckle rumbling out of his chest, almost sounding fatherly. “Volley and Shadow Stalker, correct?”

Swallowing, Taylor flicked her eyes to the right, cursing Sophia’s mask. If she was the only person shell-shocked by this she would never live it down. Focusing back on Legend, she felt her throat bob as she swallowed, running her tongue along cold, dry lips. “I’m Volley,” she said, like a complete moron.

Legend still grinned, mouth crinkling, amusement playing over what she could see of his features. He turned to glance at Sophia, smile never faltering. “Then this would be...”

“Shadow Stalker,” Sophia blurted, and Taylor didn’t feel a single droplet of guilt for the relief she felt at hearing Sophia’s own somewhat breathless voice, the nervousness that so rarely made its way into her person. “I am her.”

Taylor couldn’t help the snort at that. Or the yelp when Sophia dug her bony, reinforced elbow into her ribs.

Legend _laughed_ , and his laugh was different to what she was used to. It was low, a rumbling chuckle that worked its way up from his chest, into his throat, and then out of his mouth, growing higher the longer it went on. It wasn’t a cruel laugh, or a mocking one for that matter, it was happy and relieved and all the things a laugh _should_ be, mirthful and amused but not in any way that made Taylor bristle.

Finally, after working himself through his laughter, Legend gently lowered himself to the ground. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Shadow Stalker,” he said, voice smooth and warm, something like genuine _happiness_ tucked away in his voice. “You as well, Volley. Let me say, as a representative for the Protectorate, we are incredibly glad you decided to join us, despite your past.”

Taylor felt her chest go warm, fuzzy, pride warring and quickly trouncing the queasy sense that she wasn’t a hero, that lingering doubt about where she should be. Her face flushed, not out of embarrassment, or particularly heated feelings, but simply out of happiness. It was an odd experience. “Thanks,” Taylor mumbled, not quite able to conjure up anything louder.

“If you haven’t figured it out already, I’ll be coming with you for your debut patrol. We’ll be making the rounds around Protectorate-controlled territory currently, keeping away from the borders between it and gang-influenced regions,” Legend began, folding his hands behind his back. “We’ll be sticking to the main streets for the most part, and we are allowed to engage if we come across anything untoward. Volley, you have your approved nets and balls, right?”

Blinking, Taylor’s brain scrambled. “Yes, uh, Legend. Sir. Mr. Legend?” Fuck she was bad at this, why couldn’t she just be _normal_ everyone was probably like this around him the first time and it was fucking _embarrassing_.

“Just Legend, Volley,” the man in question said, his voice warm.

Swallowing, Taylor nodded. “Yeah, uh, I have my volleyballs and nets. I’m, uh, currently working on a pair of collapsable poles which’ll form a hardlight shield between them after I throw them to places! But uh, me and Ch—er, Kid Win, rather, couldn’t get them working before my first patrol.”

“That’s fine,” Legend said just as easily, smiling between the two of them. “Shall we be off?”

“Uhm, Legend?”

He glanced back at her, a curious look on his face.

“I can’t fly.”

That startled another laugh out of him, this one less of a chuckle and more of a bark. “Volley,” he said, voice thick with amusement. “I can walk.”

“Oh. Right.” Why was this giving her a sense of deja vu? 

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Treading down the hallway, Sophia tried to ignore the sweat slicking beneath her costume. It was hot, almost too hot, in comparison to the temperatures they’d dealt with for the last hour and a bit. She had kinda hoped her body would stop fucking around and get used to it, but as with most things, she was left disappointed, sticky, and more than a little overheated.

“Let’s go in,” Legend said, glancing back at the two of them, a grin tugging at his lips. He swerved away from the middle of the hallway, towards the meeting area door, and Sophia found herself lengthening her strides to keep pace with him.

The meeting room was crowded with just about everyone they could fit into it when they arrived. Legend quickly went ahead of them, that lax, comfortable smile on his face, passing through the door first, while Taylor stuck closer to her, the doorframe just barely wide enough to let them both through without any squishing.

Glancing back towards her, Sophia watched as Taylor fidgeted in place, just about vibrating with energy. The patrol hadn’t been particularly interesting, no real fights outside of Taylor getting a chance to throw a net at someone who was trying to smash a parked car with a bat. As a result, she had spent most of the patrol babbling, filling the silence, doing what Sophia sure as shit couldn’t and despite the fact that she understood maybe a tenth of what came out of Taylor’s mouth when she started going on about aerodynamics - and she had a pretty good hunch that Legend was in the same boat - there had been something very soothing about it.

That was the dichotomy with Taylor, really. She was either quiet, withdrawn, pulled taut into a ball of her own making, or she vibrated with energy, gushed endlessly about anything she could think of. Both were good qualities, Taylor’s silences were sometimes very comfortable, but her babble was... if not more familiar, more preferable. Seeing her so lively, so engaged, so eager to talk and discuss made her body grow warm beneath her costume.

Glancing around the room, Sophia noticed the absence of the loaned capes, with the exception of Fax, who was leaning against a wall beside Battery. Shockplug, Overshadow and Quarantine had probably gone home then, and she’d known about Hoser leaving even sooner due to private problems back at his home in Canada, whatever that meant. It was curious why Fax of all people remained, but then she might be a permanent transfer for all she knew.

Legend made his way past the other Wards, who he smiled politely at, and came to a stop beside Armsmaster, who looked at him with a bit of frustration but no more than what he normally showed. Still, he did seem a bit more prickly than usual.

“This is the debriefing for Volley’s very first patrol,” Legend began, his voice carrying, catching the attention of anyone who hadn’t already been focused on him. “Volley, Shadow Stalker, could you come up please?”

Glancing at Taylor, who was glancing back, Sophia inclined her head. Taylor went first, passing by Missy and waving her fingers, the smaller girl smiling brightly from beneath her green visor at the two of them as they made their way past the chairs, the big table that dominated the center of the room, and came to a stop just to Legend’s right.

“Volley, would you like to begin the debriefing? We’ll switch to Shadow Stalker for the later half, or she can go first and you go later.”

Taylor froze, went rigid, and Sophia could all but see her scanning the crowd with her eyes. After another moment of tense silence, her throat bobbed, and she nodded. “I’ll go first.”

Legend stepped to the side and Taylor, awkwardly, shuffled into the center stage.

Clearing her throat, Taylor folded her hands behind her back, body twitching as she visibly tried to center herself. Sophia wanted to reach out, to take her hand, squeeze it, reassure her it was her first debriefing and she wasn’t expected to be perfect, but professionality came first when it came to shit like this, unfortunately.

“Well, uh,” Taylor stuttered, cheeks growing even redder despite the cherry they’d been dappled with from the outside cold. “We started on Robie Street and headed down towards Lawrence Avenue. There, we were flagged down by a few people who had their car smashed by someone, all today, about four or five cars total.”

Taylor breathed in, out. Sophia couldn’t help the little ring of praise for her in her head, her cadence was getting better, for all that she hated the PRT’s habit of cycling therapists, what Taylor had achieved through them was clearly helping.

“From there, we found a car without an owner which had its front windows smashed in. I uh, though the impacts looked a lot like a bat, because they sorta”—Taylor made a vague motion with her hands, spreading them apart as she moved them up—“got thicker near the tip.”

Assault snorted then immediately grunted, Battery pressing her heel down onto the tip of his foot. Taylor’s face went bright red.

“ _Uhm_ , uh. So, uh, we kinda, er—” Taylor struggled for a moment, the heat draining from her face, before, finally, with an unsteady exhale, she managed to recenter herself. More praise rung in Sophia’s head, god she was doing good. “Tracked the guy down. A teenager, about sixteen or seventeen? He was high on something, I think, like designer drugs since he was completely out of it and about to start beating on a BMW. I threw a net and caught him.”

There was a sharp clap, ringing out from Triumph. Everyone turned to stare at him, Taylor included, and from the way her jaw was tightening, she had probably taken it as an insult.

“What?” Her least favourite Wards captain asked, sounding almost insulted. “I clap for everyone who achieves their first takedown. This is big, regardless of her past.” The words rippled through the room for a moment, a low murmur of talk picking up before, with almost casual ease, Missy started clapping. Then Chris, then even Dean and Carlos and for a few moments Sophia watched Taylor stand there, looking completely fucking shell-shocked while she received her applause.

Once it had died down, Legend stepped forward again. “With that, Shadow Stalker?”

Sophia met Taylor’s eyes, despite a visor and a mask stopping them from making true eye contact. Taylor nodded, stepped back, and Sophia walked forward, taking her place instead. She felt herself fall into the similar mindset, disseminating the patrol down into rote information, something she was more than used to. She had been doing this for four years, had learned it from the very moment she had powers, before she had even the chance to patrol. This was easy.

Opening her mouth, Sophia started up where Taylor left off.

* * *

Fingers tangled with Taylor’s beneath the table, kept just ever-so-slightly out of sight, Sophia balanced her chin on her knuckles as she watched Piggot plod her ass up towards center stage. Legend, having finished reviewing their conduct on the patrol after shooing them to some seats, stepped away with a simple smile, though it was more strained than it had been for functionally everyone else in the room.

Piggot cleared her throat once, twice, thrice, until finally everyone had their focus on her. “Because we’re all here, we will be going over some extra announcements relating to recent events and obvious absences.”

Taylor’s fingers stiffened, only relaxing once Sophia had squeezed them a few times.

“To begin with, if you haven’t already noticed, Overshadow, Shockplug, and Quarantine were sent back to their respective branches. They did us a duty coming here to help with our gang issues, and therefore we will be hosting some of their merchandise and releasing some videos of them in action to promote them.”

Well, that was whatever. Overshadow’s power didn’t like her much, apparently he was perpetually aware of her when she was in her Breaker state but the second he tried to actually use his power on her, it would immediately fail and he’d get a headache from the backlash. At least now she could live without him glaring at her every second of the damn day.

“Next, Fax will be remaining in Brockton Bay for the foreseeable future. Please welcome her to our roster.”

Piggot paused, letting the short burst of applause - mostly from the members of the Protectorate, who had interacted with her more than the Wards - start and end.

“Moving on, we have confirmation Stormtiger jumped state borders.”

Taylor’s hand tensed strangle-tight around Sophia’s, painfully strong, but she grit her teeth and coped through it, squeezing back until, finally, her fingers relaxed, but didn’t quite untense, stuck stiff and unyielding.

“We believe he’s fled to Connecticut and may be seeking asylum with groups who align with him politically further south, in Virginia or, if he can make it that far without detection, Florida. We currently have people tracking all reports of him and have had several independents pledge to attempt to capture or restrain him. Furthermore, while the government was _deliberating_ it before, due to his actions done to escape the police, resulting in several dead, he has been granted an expedited Birdcage sentence in the event he is captured.”

The words hung like a heavy, wet blanket over the meeting room. Taylor swallowed audibly, throat bobbing, her body tense and rigid, but was, with time, gradually relaxing.

“It is out of our hands,” Piggot said, speaking to everyone but with eyes focused on Taylor. With those words, Taylor just _slumped_ , the tension unfurling out of her, leaving only their twined fingers stiff and taut. “It’s unlikely he’ll attempt to return, with Kaiser’s attempts at condemning his actions. The manhunt for him will continue, and hopefully the increase to his bounty will draw in mercenary capes to play their hand, but until something substantial happens, this is no longer our concern _or_ our focus. Are we clear?”

When nobody said anything, Piggot nodded curtly. “Good. On a lighter note, Cricket is slated for life and Europa for ten years in the max security prison upstate. They will be moved in a few days, and while Cricket avoided a Birdcage sentencing with the help of the generous few who funded her legal aid”—Piggot’s face darkened, and a twinge of something that Sophia sure as shit wasn’t going to call _respect_ , but was close enough, wormed its way up into her throat—“she will be immediately expedited to it if she either escapes from prison or is ever caught again doing crimes. Who will be escorting the convoy upstate has already been decided, so do not ask to join it if you haven’t already been informed.”

Sophia jolted a bit when Taylor’s cheek came to rest on her shoulder. The inflexible material of her visor bit into her skin a little because of it, but she didn’t push her off. If anyone deserved a bit of comfort, regardless of how unprofessional displays of such might be, it sure as fuck was Taylor.

“On a lighter note, Legend will be remaining with our team for at least the next two weeks to ensure no further upswells of crime take place. He will be leading the convoy to the prison, and he will also be the main force behind any retaliatory action against the Empire that we plan. Lastly, we are upgrading Über and Leet’s threat classification to B. You are to no longer play soft with them, nor are you to give them any leeway in their actions. They are villains, they have proven as much with their decision to peddle tech to the Empire, and if you see them, attempted arrests are to be done with force. All of you will be receiving emails with more information on this, including the Wards, and I expect all of you to read over it.”

Seriously? Well, Sophia wasn’t really going to complain that they were finally going to start handling them, but B-class? That felt... almost excessive. They had been D+ the last time she’d checked their dossiers, kept low to ensure the PRT didn’t start escalating with a Tinker of unknown specialty and a combat Thinker. They had just seemed to want to make videos, despite their habit of breaking the law, and it had made them disarming. It was a long time coming, for what it was worth.

“We have nothing else to discuss,” Piggot finally said, stepping away. “You are all dismissed.”


	29. C-TRACK 3.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor, Sophia and Emma go on a date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to Lyrisey for helping me with this. I struggled a lot with this chapter due to a slew of technical issues (thanks Google) and it was just hard to get into a rhythm. I do hope you all enjoy the fluff!

Dr. Castaneda was a very unimposing person. She wasn’t particularly tall, shorter than Taylor by no small margin, with olive skin that wrinkled and creased from age and work. She had off-brown hair that she always wore tucked up into a bun, kept in place by a mesh net, with brown, large eyes, a slightly upturned nose, and thin, small lips which tended to purse when she wasn’t controlling her expression. Her makeup was noticeable, if nothing else, lips and eyelids stained soot-black, but even if it was striking, it did very little to make Dr. Castaneda anything but relatively forgettable.

Despite that, Taylor was struck with the thought that she’d have a hard time forgetting her, just like she still had trouble forgetting Dr. Hartaputri. She had gotten attached to Dr. Hartaputri, hadn’t managed to avoid the same fate with Dr. Castaneda, and like when she’d been told that Dr. Hartaputri had been shuffled out, the ache that came from thinking about Dr. Castaneda leaving lingered, buried itself in her chest like a knife and _twisted_.

“Good morning, Taylor,” Dr. Castaneda said gently, sitting in her seat, surrounded by a room that wasn’t hers, would never be hers. It was a hollow room for hollow therapy and she was still crushed beneath the weight of it. “This will be our last session before I’m rotated out. Did you see if you could find what I asked?”

Nodding, not really trusting herself to speak, Taylor leaned over towards her schoolbag, tugging at the zipper until the teeth loosened and she could pull it fully open. Reaching inside, she swiped the small little card-shaped MP3 player off of the top, the accompanying knot of tangled earphones following after it. Curling her fingers around it until the edges bit into her skin, she turned back, stared at Dr. Castaneda with her heart in her throat. “Yeah.”

Pride swelled over Dr. Castaneda’s face, brief and immaterial and _warm_ before it all faded back to her professional facade. “What songs did you choose, if I may ask?” Her voice was curious, but light; friendly, yes, but not so much that she pushed into her comfort zone.

Taylor fidgeted, ran her thumb over small clicky buttons, the screen blinking on for a moment before she held the center one down, forcing it back to sleep. “Mom had a bunch of Weezer songs already downloaded,” she finally confessed. “I also have some Motion City Soundtrack and Florence and the Machine on there, among other things, but those are the main three.”

The mask dropped on Dr. Castaneda’s face again, warmth and fondness tucked over her features for longer than it had been before. It faded, slowly, but the pride and support still lingered in the wrinkles around her eyes, the crease of her mouth, the way her cheeks twitched. “Taylor,” she started again, slow and smooth and so _gentle_. “I’m not sure if this will help you as much as I hope it will, distraction techniques for people with PTSD can vary tremendously, but I am so glad you’re trying this method. If nothing else, music might become a hobby for you, might be an outlet for some of the feelings we’ve talked about.”

Music had always been a part of her life, in truth. She’d been in band class since she entered Junior High and she’d only dropped it because of Brent sometime into the middle half of her first year of High School. It had been a painful decision, one brought on by his insistence that she spend more time with him, that he took precedence, and in leaving she had left more than a few of her band friends upset, hurt at her refusal to explain why she was going away. In hindsight, it wasn’t hard to see that it had been another way he’d cut off her social network, isolating her in small pieces until all she had left was him, but her love for music hadn’t ever really faded, even if she hadn’t practiced in nearly eight months.

“Yeah,” she replied instead, her throat clogging with unvoiced thoughts, things she might’ve been more open about if she hadn’t known Dr. Castaneda wouldn’t be there for her therapy session next Tuesday. “Yeah, maybe.” Her breath was thick, voice weighed down, and from the way that Dr. Castaneda’s smile weakened, grew pained, she wasn’t doing a very good job at hiding it.

Glancing away from the therapist and to the clock, Taylor let her eyes flutter shut. Six o’clock in the morning, the only time she could get before Dr. Castaneda would be gone, to be replaced with someone she didn’t know, someone who she would have to establish boundaries and trust with before they, too, were torn away, a safety net cut to pieces. It was a cycle she wasn’t particularly sure she could endure, going into the future.

“How about,” Dr. Castaneda began, voice slow and soothing and so painfully transient. “We talk about the date you’ll be going to today, the one you were so excited about?”

Taylor slid her eyes open, flicked them down to Dr. Castaneda and ran her tongue across her dry, frostbitten lower lip. “Yeah,” she exhaled, swallowing back down the lump in her throat. “I can do that.”

* * *

[5 of 13]  
[_Now Playing..._](https://youtu.be/c_5JCHMhztM)

* * *

Brockton Bay had always been quick to revert back to the status quo. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since her first patrol, since Legend’s public arrival in the Bay, and as though it had been the flick of a switch, things were back to normal. Private schools opened again, the gangs in school retreated to their little corners, teachers smiled more, seemed less wary, and a lot of the tension she had felt bristling at the corners of her focus had just up and vanished. Sure, people were talking about her and Legend, about the patrol, she had even overheard a few people talking about how relieved they were that Volley had still been alive, still willing to go out on the streets, but otherwise? It felt like she’d gone back in time to before Hookwolf, before the weapon cache.

Things had to return to normal.

Everything but her.

Scraping the cigarette beneath the heel of her boot, snow crunching around the treads, Taylor glanced back behind herself, scraped eyes over the brick facade that dominated Winslow’s exterior. She felt out of place, out of time, similar enough to the others that she passed muster, even to herself, but just different enough that a closer glance gave the entire game away. She felt like a stiletto in a drawer full of steak knives, subtly different, altered. It was more pronounced than it had ever been, and though the feeling had been around since she first got her powers, it had never been that noticeable before.

A piece of gum entered her field of vision, pinched between two fingers with accompanying painted nails. “Taylor,” Emma said, voice firm. “These will kill you one day, and while I’ve given up on getting you out of that habit, I refuse to kiss you with nicotine breath. Open up.”

Shooting a look at Emma, who was staring back at her with something stern and stubborn across her features, Taylor obligingly propped her mouth open. Wordlessly, Emma dropped the piece of gum in before quickly retracting her fingers, the taste of peppermint exploding across her tongue. Closing her mouth to a clack of her teeth, she pointedly kept staring at Emma as she gnawed on the piece of gum, working the thing across the back of her teeth, over her tongue, catching it between her molars.

Finally, after a bit more of intentionally loud and obnoxious chewing, Taylor glanced away and towards the road. “Where’s Sophia, anyway?” she found herself asking, eyes glancing around the sidewalk that connected back up to the front entrance of the school.

Emma shuffled in closer, bumping shoulders. “Getting her car.”

What. “Sophia has a _car?_ ”

Emma just stared at her, looking unimpressed. “Taylor, your girlfriend’s birthday is in _September._ She’s been sixteen for over five months now, of course she has a car.”

“Not everyone gets a license the first moment they can,” she was quick to point out. “I’m not going to be getting one.”

That got her a raised eyebrow, tauntingly smug. “Taylor,” Emma started, a smirk in her voice. “That’s because your parents agreed not to let you behind the wheel until you’re at least eighteen after that near-miss with your mother.”

Her stomach twisted unpleasantly at the thought, a blast of nausea that nearly made her stumble. The ‘close scare’ in question involved Mom nearly getting t-boned by a car going twice the speed limit because of a drunk driver, only missing by a hair and scraping the shit out of the front bumper of the car instead. The traffic cop who had interviewed her about the entire thing had commented she probably would’ve died instantly on impact - which, typical for a cop, Taylor supposed - had the car hit her dead on, and the only reason it hadn’t was that Mom had slowed down and pulled to the side to answer a call and tell her colleague that she was driving and couldn’t talk right now.

Fingers tangled in with hers, dragging her out of her thoughts. Taylor glanced towards Emma, who was looking back at her apologetically. Something in her throat settled, loosened, and warmth came to gradually replace it. She wasn’t going to disappear, her mother wasn’t going to die, she was fine.

“Sorry,” she murmured, leaning in closer, shoulders squishing together, Emma’s breath ghosting over her skin, little puffs of warmth. She was apologizing, she was here, and that’s all that mattered really. “That was a low blow, I didn’t think it through. I can’t joke about that.”

Opening her mouth to respond, she found herself at a loss for words as a car pulled up in front of them. It was a pretty old model, even at a glance, some brand of Subaru with that particular stripe of colour down near the wheels while up top it was that kinda ugly off-white colour.

The window rolled itself down and Sophia stuck her head out, her seatbelt visibly straining against the action. “Get in the back,” she called out, one hand locked firmly on the wheel while the other held the gearshift in a stranglehold. When neither she nor Emma made a move to approach, Sophia scowled, looking annoyed. “Hurry up! It’s fuckin’ cold.”

That jarred both herself and Emma into motion, though Emma made it to the door first, hauling it open with a tug and shuffling in, moving to the other end of the back to give her space. Hunching down, she followed in after her, pausing only to hook her fingers into the door and pull it shut behind her. The interior of the car smelled profusely of Sophia, all the mixed oiled leather scents, accompanied by the faintest whiff of something pine-scented, not that she could find a source for it.

Rolling the window back up, Sophia maneuvered the car back into gear and pulled away from the curb, wheels catching and crunching across little pockets of frozen snow.

Working the seatbelt across her front after first shoving her bag out of the way, Taylor was struck by an odd thought. “Sophia?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t you need an adult driver in the car?”

Sophia made a noise. “I _did_ ,” she corrected, the car crawling to a halt at the first series of red lights. Taylor finally managed to get the belt to click into place, Emma doing the same shortly after her. “But I graduated from my learner’s permit like a month or something ago. I’m now allowed to drive without someone with me, but I can’t have anyone in the front seats with me, and I can’t drive from midnight to five in the morning, among a few other things. It’s kinda fuckin’ stupid, but I need to be eighteen before I’m allowed to graduate into a full license.”

Huh. Sinking back into the slightly lumpy embrace of the seat, she found herself relaxing minutely, even as the car sped back up as the light changed back to green. Sophia handled the car well, drove with a feeling of experience, not chasing the tail of the car in front of her while also taking turns easily and without any jerkiness. If not for the fact that she’d just been told otherwise, she would’ve assumed Sophia had been driving for over a year, possibly more.

“Stupid rules are stupid, but fuckin’ _whatever_. I’m driving, I have my own car, I’m a free bird. Emma, do you have the directions?”

Emma glanced up from her phone, blinking owlishly at Sophia from the rearview mirror. “Of course I do,” she finally said, sounding put off. “It’s my favourite place in the city, I could tell you off my heart.”

“Well, where’s it?” Sophia shot back, eyes focusing back on the road.

That earned Sophia another long, uncomprehending look from Emma. “I’m surrounded by uncultured plebeians,” she finally belted out, faux-aghast. “Taylor didn’t know you owned a car, and Sophia doesn’t know where the best cafe in the city is.”

“You’re the one who chose to date us,” Taylor pointed out at the same time as Sophia said, “if you don’t behave, I can and will drive straight to a McDonalds.”

Emma, hilariously, managed to _blanch_ at the implied thread of McDonald’s coffee and pastries. “Alright! Fine! I’ll behave, just, let me get my map app out.”

* * *

Little Coffee Shop on the Hill was as bougie as the name implied it would be. It was two stories tall, the exterior decorated to inspire comparisons to gothic architecture, all black wrought iron and intricately designed balconies. The front door was flanked by a tall - and very authentic, if Emma’s gushing was to be believed - oil lamp, not that it was on, seeing as it was still more than bright enough to see out. There were a few cars parked near its front windows, but not many, and glancing into the shop it looked a little empty, though considering it was quarter-to-four, it probably wasn’t a really active hour.

“I can’t believe you made me drive here,” Sophia complained, picking up the lost thread of conversation. “Emma, this is hands down the richest part of the damn city. I’m pretty sure we drove past the Stansfield’s goddamn _mansion_ not five minutes ago. How did you even find this place?”

Emma, busy trying to get her seatbelt unclipped, just glanced up with a lidded, amused expression. “Dad brought me here after I did my first big modelling gig,” she supplied, lips twitching, eyes going a bit distant, expression nostalgic. “It was the first time I ever had coffee, I _hated_ it because my dear father thought it would be hilarious to order it black for me and withhold the sugar and cream until I agreed he was ‘the best parent’.”

Sophia made a face, the same face she usually made when she heard factoids about Dad’s obsession with paprika. “White people,” she muttered, shaking her head as she reached up, slipped her sunglasses off, and tucked them into her pocket. She twisted the key next, the car sputtering from idle to inert, engine rattling off and all four doors simultaneously unlocking with a loud _clack_. “You guys can leave your bags in here, the neighbourhood looks nice enough to not risk getting my windows blown in. Which, speaking of, Emma, how expensive is this place?”

“Money is no object,” Emma deflected.

Taylor found her eyes rolling up into her head. “ _Emma_ ,” she complained. While Emma could be evasive at the best of times, it was rarely so transparent. The fact that it was probably meant she was going to have goddamn _nightmares_ about the costs on the menu tonight.

The girl in question just puffed one cheek out, a stubborn cast to her jaw. “ _I’m_ paying for it, you don’t get to be stingy on my dad’s dime. We’re old money, don’t think too deeply about it.”

That was enough for Sophia, apparently, who mulled the entire situation over her head for all of about ten seconds before throwing her shoulders up in a shrug. “I’m not complaining.”

Both of them turned to look at her, their stares all but burning holes in her face. Taylor felt her resistance to the idea steadily die, before, finally, she gave in. “Fine,” she grit out, ignoring Emma pumping her fist in an entirely unnecessary victorious gesture. “But I’m not getting anything that’s too excessive.”

Popping the door, Taylor stepped out of the car and into the small parking space. Her boots crunched against the brittle snow, frozen and refrozen until it was little more than just white ice, packed hard and into clumps. She kicked at it a bit, watched as it caught around the toe of her boot and flew out, landing against the solid packed snow and skipping off the surface. It was cold, the world was still and empty, the roads largely untravelled, the area quiet. It made her feel on edge, like she was waiting for something to interrupt her, something to pull everyone apart.

Unconsciously, her hand found her pocket, brushing over the MP3 player. She hadn’t used it yet to distract herself, but something about it even being there had been calming, soothing her nerves. She’d even got a note passed to Blackwell, who had herself passed it to her teachers, letting her use it in class if she got overwhelmed. Apparently having an actual PTSD diagnosis came with more benefits than being labelled as traumatized.

“Taylor?”

Glancing up, she worked to blink the thoughts away from her head, the world returning to focus. Sophia was staring at her, leaning against the driver's side door. “You doing alright?”

The lie was on her bottom lip before she could think twice about it, but she didn’t let it slip past her teeth. Reaching behind her, she gently shut the door, trying to find the best way to phrase this, to assuage her concern without making this into something, something that would spoil the date, only their second. Swallowing dryly, Taylor just shrugged, the words never coming to her. Nothing she could say would make any of this okay, the hurt from losing another therapist, the feeling of spinning her wheels, the way she felt so _fucking_ out of place now that it made her skin crawl to overhear people talk about normal things, about dates and break-ups and homework and all the other shit that was considered part of being a teenager.

But was she a teenager anymore? She didn’t feel like it most of the time, felt like at any second she would be an adult and not in a good way. It felt transient, like she was the only person watching the world speed on past them, watching the world pull people apart. It hurt, everything hurt, it was as though if she opened her mouth and voiced a single one of those fucked up knotted thoughts in her head someone would point her out, get her removed, take everything away from her again because she wasn’t what the world considered normal. She never was, but now it was worse, so, so much worse.

Sophia’s face softened, relaxed. Taylor had never thought she’d see her like this, didn’t think it was something Sophia could do. She’d passed her off as simple and aggressive, set in her ways, but... that’d been unfair, a shallow reading of a complicated person, a way to justify her attraction during a part of her life where she was still reeling from the mistake of telling someone about being bisexual. There was more to her, more to every part of the relationship than Taylor ever assumed there would be. People were complicated, water was wet, and she liked Sophia more for it.

“If you can’t do this, Emma will understand,” Sophia soothed, but Taylor shook her head, cutting off that line of conversation. No, she could do this, she was just... grappling with the problem, with feeling out of place, abnormal, in a world that worked off of normal logic.

“Sorry,” Taylor finally managed, the word choked out. “It’s just difficult readjusting.”

Understanding flickered over Sophia’s face, worry creasing her eyes. She didn’t leave, she didn’t turn around, didn’t look at her like she couldn’t comprehend. There was sympathy there, _empathy_ , someone else understood, even if maybe only abstractly. “Are you talking to someone about it?”

“I’ll have to next time I go in,” Taylor managed to get out, trying to keep the emotion from her voice, the truth that she’d been reluctant to talk about it, to explain it to anyone because vocalizing it made it _so much more real_. But, then, Sophia hadn’t left, was looking at her with warm, comforting eyes, like she’d do almost anything to help her, to understand.

Some of the tension vanished from Sophia’s posture and Taylor more felt than heard her own breathing come easier, less weighed down by her shitty brain. “Well,” Sophia began, reaching up with her keys and pressing a button, the car lighting up, honking, and locking at the same time. “Let’s go find Emma before she thinks we ran off to McDonald's or something.”

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

Watching Taylor relax back down from whatever mental ledge she had been on was one part relieving and one part harrowing. It had never and likely would never be difficult to tell when she was on edge, there was a certain way she pulled into her own head that stuck out like a broken thumb. She became unresponsive, stared off into the distance, and tended to revert to being non-verbal. Watching her come out of it was painful, in both a bad and good way, bad in that her chest ached at seeing her like that to begin with, good in that her coming out of it was a relief, was like watching the lights come on in a home.

She sucked at helping. She could be an anchor for Taylor, be there to keep her grounded, but it came down to Emma’s own expertise handling her when she needed to get her out of it, or alternatively just waiting the thing out until Taylor reemerged of her own power. It was a fucking _awful_ situation, one that made her feel helpless, that made her fucking _hurt_ because she was so inelegant to be unable to help someone she was dating out of that headspace. She wanted to, God did she want to, but it wasn’t something she was familiar with, didn’t think she ever would be unless she looked into it, talked to Emma about it, and lately she was starting to think that she might.

Glancing away from Emma and Taylor, hunched over the menu and bickering about coffee, Sophia swiped her eyes across her own menu. She, personally, fucking hated coffee, it was the bitter taint of the warm drink kingdom and had all the appeal of someone’s bitter taint, for that matter. Thankfully, seeing as this _was_ the most expensive cafe she had been to, they had more than coffee and donuts, including a long list of tea that had not a single familiar blend on them, because of course it wouldn’t. Admittedly, the pastries were more familiar, but Sophia was pretty sure that was because there were only so many types of pastry when you got down to it. Apple fritters, strudels, profiteroles, hell there was even something called a _Viennoiserie_ that, going by the picture, seemed to be some sort of lovechild between a cinnamon roll and croissant.

It was probably really hard to be so pretentious when you had to make shit called a _strudel_ or a _cream puff_. The tea, on the other hand, started at ‘Pistachio Lime Yerba Mate’ and only got increasingly more bizarre the further down the list she went. ‘Carrot Cake Rooibos?’ Putting aside the last bit - what on fucking earth was a _rooibos?_ \- that sounded fine, ‘Honeydew Hibiscus Fruit Tisane’ on the other hand? She knew a few of those words, at most, and it looked like piss in a cup. ‘Bleu Hibiscus Chai’? ‘Mint Cherry Blossom’? Did they fucking think she ate _trees_ on the regular? What was she, a giraffe?

Why didn’t they stock like, fucking Green Tea or Earl Grey or literally anything that someone not being tortured would drink? At least she knew what Earl Grey tasted like but it was anyone’s guess what eating _cherry blossom tea_ would taste like. Probably a lot like pollen, and she _hated_ pollen.

“You’re all ready to order?”

Glancing up at the server, a man in his early forties with a shock of electric-blue hair wearing a full tuxedo, Sophia flicked her gaze over to Emma and Taylor, who were _still_ arguing over... whether or not drip-brew coffee was better than a press? What on earth was _drip-brew_? Did they put the pot out in the damn rain? “I’ll have a uh,” she really didn’t want _any_ of this but hey today was a time for adventures, seeing as she wasn’t the one paying double-digits for a cup of tea. “This carrot cake, tea, thing, and whatever a viennoiserie is?”

The server looked unimpressed with her. Sophia did not, frankly, care.

“Right, the Carrot Cake Rooibos tea and a single _viennoiserie_ , then. What about you two?”

It was telling that he pronounced the pastry entirely different to how she had.

Taylor perked up, glancing at Emma, who shrugged back at her in wordless acquiescence. “I’ll have your pressed coffee,” she began very carefully. “Your Romanian blend, if that’s fine? With two sugar and one cream.”

Wordlessly, the server turned to look at Emma, jotting Taylor’s order down as he did.

“A shot of espresso, as dark as you can make it, and a croissant.”

The man raised an eyebrow, but Emma just put up a stubborn front, tilted her head back, and looked at him with lidded, challenging eyes.

“Right,” he finally muttered out, flipping his notebook over. “It’ll be ready in a short while. I’ll be back with your orders.”

Then he was gone, shock of cyan hair vanishing into the awaiting throng of eager patissiers and coffee makers and whatever the fuck else they had behind that stained-wood bar of theirs.

For a moment, the table went quiet. It wasn’t one of those nice silences that she could get when hanging out with Taylor, one where nobody had to say anything, where nothing was buried or hidden beneath it. It was, rather, the awkward, stilted silence of nobody really knowing _what_ to do, what to say, when to say something, how to act, anything. God, she wished Paula was here, bizarrely enough, even if that would mean cutting down on any PDA when she was looking it would still be infinitely easier since the kid had yet to develop the ability to understand stilted silences and filled them in with an endless babble of conversation.

Taylor was fidgeting, Emma was folding and unfolding her hands like she might grow a third one if she did it just right, and Sophia found herself staring at the ceiling, the floor, the table, anything but her dates. Dates, plural, she was part of a three-part group, she had two girlfriends. It wasn’t like that hadn’t sunk in before, but something about it had been easier to accept when conversation flowed like a stream instead of getting all dammed up.

Fuck it. She wasn’t going to let this continue. “What’s so important about coffee, anyway?”

That at least got her some expressions, though few of them were anything polite. The woman sitting at a single-person table beside them shot her a truly venomous glare, one of the bartenders looked at her with a gaze that would kill if it could, Emma looked _aghast_ and Taylor just looked mutedly confused.

“Is it the caffeine?” Sophia continued undaunted, because if this was a blockage in their relationship it had to go out the window. Communication was integral to healthy relationships, after all, and you couldn’t very well _do_ that if _nobody would actually talk_. “Like, I tried coffee once and it didn’t taste very good. I’m just curious.”

“It reminds me of home,” Taylor supplied, cutting Emma off, who in response glanced at her curiously. “The smell is the best part, to me, my mom’s car absolutely _reeks_ because of it. I don’t mind the taste, honestly, but it’s not what I’m really here for.”

Emma twitched. “I like the taste more than the smell,” she admitted after another moment, voice soft. “I’m not really sure why? I don’t like pungent things, and coffee is about as pungent as you can get, but I still like it.”

“I do think we could find coffee you would like, though,” Taylor mused, speaking aloud. Sophia felt her face twitch, because she was pretty sure they couldn’t, since she couldn’t even stand the taste of coffee when it was added to _sweets_. “Maybe something sweeter? Like an iced cappuccino or something.”

“Who would’ve thought _Sophia Hess_ , track star, would have a sweet tooth,” Emma teased, sliding back into the conversation with a fluidity that only she really had among them.

Sophia felt her face flush, burny and heated. “I _don’t_ ,” she insisted, though that just got her dubious looks from both Taylor _and_ Emma, the traitors.

“I’ll prove it,” Emma interjected, a sly look crawling over her face. Something in her heart lurched at the expression, and it wasn’t altogether unpleasant. “What’s your favourite type of tea?”

“Earl Grey,” she answered without thinking.

“Why do you like it?” Emma continued, keeping up the rhythm.

She didn’t even hesitate. “Because it tastes like froot loops.”

There was a burst of silence for a moment before she could almost _feel_ everyone in the cafe stare at her. Her face burned.

“I rest my case,” Emma said smugly. Sophia pressed her foot out, scraped the toe of her shoe along Emma’s ankle in retaliation, though all that did was get a twitch out of her and some colour flushing against her cheeks.

Taylor giggled, startling Sophia out of the byplay. The giggle lengthened, deepened, and turned to chortles, her hand coming up to cup her face as the tension drooled out of her, her posture relaxing, her eyes shut tight as she tried to repeatedly swallow down the errant laughter. Sophia hadn’t even really thought the conversation was _that_ funny, but whatever Taylor got out of it, well, she wasn’t about to complain. It was a really nice change to see her this bubbly.

“Sorry,” she wheezed out, palming at her eyes to wipe away some of the tears. “Sorry, it’s just—” another laugh, a short cackle that bubbled out of her, pitched with relief. “This is nice,” she finally declared, not clarifying where her laughter came from, her mouth stretched into a smile that gave her dimples. It was actually kinda cute.

“It is,” Emma readily agreed, smiling softly in Taylor’s direction. It was infectious, if the way Sophia’s face cramped itself into a bit of a smile, teeth beneath her lips, but still curved, was any indication.

“I think we should choose something other than a cafe next time,” Taylor decided diplomatically, glancing around. “Something more interactive,” she clarified.

Emma didn’t seem to object, and Sophia was, honestly, on board if it meant never coming back here again, on threat of her life.

“Maybe we could do something by the docks?” Emma eventually suggested.

It wasn’t a _bad_ idea, but... “In February?”

“We can wear bulkier jackets,” Taylor pointed out after a moment. “It’s not like we have to go right by the water.”

That was a fair point, though Sophia wasn’t particularly looking forward to the blasts of salty, frigid wind that came with being within a city block of the damn docks in the winter. Still, there _were_ a few interesting things up there that could keep them out of the way, a few bookstores that Taylor and Emma might like, and there were more than a few clothing stores that might be fun to look around in. Taylor might have a colourful closet, but she could always use more interesting clothing, she’d look nice in plaid.

“That sounds good,” Sophia agreed. Taylor smiled, looking in the moment, focused, _engaged_. God, what a change a little time and some exposure to Emma could make.

“I think—” Taylor began, only to be cut off by the sound of someone clearing their throat. Turning her head, Sophia caught sight of the blue-haired waiter again, though this time he came bearing a tray with their order on it.

Setting it down on the table, he smiled at them, though it was very much strained. “I hope you enjoy,” he said while he began to place their orders down in front of them, tucking the tray back under his arm once he was done. Emma smiled politely, while Taylor’s eyes immediately focused down on the mug of coffee before her, wide as saucers. “I’ll be back around to collect your dishes and get the payment for this when you’re done.”

Turning away from the server, from her girlfriends - it still sounded weird in her head, but it was becoming less of a _bad_ weird and increasingly more of a _good_ weird - and to the cup in front of her, Sophia gave it a cursory sniff. It smelled, abstractly, like carrot cake, she guessed, and bringing the cup up to her lip, she took a very small sip.

Then she set the cup down and pushed it away, her face screwing up in protest.

“What?” Taylor asked, looking concerned.

In a bid not to sound like a petulant child, Sophia tried to keep her voice level. “It tastes _nothing_ like carrot cake.”

Emma laughed, then almost immediately choked on her mouthful of flaky croissant.


	30. C-TRACK 3.6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor meets another Tinker, Sophia watches something burn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for some pretty vulgar language and some sexual harassment from a villain. It's not explicit, but he does use that type of language to insult someone.
> 
> On another note, this chapter really fucking fought me, especially that B-Side. Sorry if it's not entirely up to snuff.

“So, how’s it going with you and Shadow Stalker?”

Pointedly staring at the ceiling of the van, Taylor said nothing.

Dennis let out a noise, somewhere between a sigh and a groan. “You could at least _try_ to communicate,” he complained, sounding put-off by her refusal to engage. Again, she ignored him. “I’m not trying to flirt with her or anything, alright? I was just curious about how she’s doing, you know, that sort of thing. Checking in on a friend, and all of that.”

The van hit a pothole, the suspension not quite able to fully buffer it, the world lurching unpleasantly as the rear tire hopped across the pavement.

“It wasn’t even this bad in Boston,” Fax, the third and last occupant of the patrol van, muttered, sounding mulish. Taylor couldn’t really blame her for it either; the streets of Brockton were notoriously shit in large part due to the high cape concentration. The only other place that got more parahuman-related potholes - also known online as the somewhat lurid _paraholes_ , because of course someone would name it that - in America was apparently New York, and that was because the actual density of capes in New York was larger than its next closest competitor - she was pretty sure it was San Francisco, it was on a World Issues test a month or two ago - by nearly half.

“Why did you choose to stay in Brockton, anyway?” Dennis queried, thankfully changing tracks now that Taylor had made it _perfectly clear_ how much she wanted to discuss the inner workings of her relationship with Sophia with him. “I mean, I live here, it’s a shithole.”

Not that she’d ever admit it, but she was a bit curious about that too. Part of Brockton’s cape issues wasn’t just that other branches were more than reluctant to loan them out, but it was also that nobody really _voluntarily_ went to Brockton Bay. It was considered a good way to end your career by most in the cape community, whether by falling into obscurity or being murdered by a neo-nazi, it didn’t really matter. There was a reason it was called “the east coast’s Pueblo”, and that place had a new story about trafficking rings or cape-related homicides basically weekly at this point.

“Well,” Fax began, her voice high-pitched and slightly nasally. “I guess I just didn’t want to stay in Boston anymore, and Brockton needed help.”

The moment of silence that followed drew Taylor’s eyes back down from the ceiling, towards Fax herself. Out of all of them, she had possibly the most ostentatious costume. It started with her mask, an enlarged golden laurel wreath circlet that you could find on old statues of important Romans. It encircled the top half of her face, covering her eyes, with each leaf of the wreath itself wavy in shape, giving a passing resemblance to fire. There were no clear eyeholes, though much like Clockblocker’s lack thereof, she was mostly certain that it was just some fancy paint and material that could only be seen through in one way, a bit like her own visor now that she thought about it.

The rest of her costume really leaned into the Roman comparison. She had a toga that went down to a few inches just below her knees, white in colour and cinched around her waist with a length of golden rope. A red shirt beneath the toga itself had long sloping sleeves that flared out near her hands, which covered everything up to the second knuckle of, trimmed with yet more golden thread, embroidered with leaf-like designs. Beneath all of that, as far as she could tell, were golden sandals similarly styled after the Roman equivalent, with thorn-covered, vine-shaped straps that crawled across the length of her legs, all the way up past her knees, vanishing beneath the end of her costume.

Altogether, she struck an imposing figure. You didn’t really _get_ costumes like that in Brockton, with some exceptions - such as Triumph and Dauntless - people kept it relatively low-key or utility-focused. Even if her costume was volleyball themed, and could be identified as such at a glance, it had been built with the obvious intent of utility and being combat-ready. Dennis’ was the same, even with the clock motif that covered his person, he looked padded and armoured more so than even she did, though that might be because he wasn’t a ranged combatant.

It was, apparently, different in other less combat heavy branches of the PRT. Sure, some still went with subdued costume designs, but even a cursory comparison between one of New York’s Ward branches and the Brockton Bay Wards would bring up some glaring differences. Costumes tended to be more garish, more intricate with additions that would be removed in Brockton to make sure nobody could use them to hold a Ward down and murder them.

...Christ, it was her _second patrol_ and she was already getting morbid. It’d been nearly a week since her first, and it had been an uneventful, PR-focused patrol more than one that might prepare her for the reality of her new job. Wards were technically supposed to be off the streets, doing hands-on training and learning instead of patrols, but when your city’s as shit as Brockton was, you rarely got the opportunity to focus on non-combative training.

The van hit another pothole, lurching her around again. Taylor shut her eyes to cut down on the swell of motion sickness that curled in her gut. Fuck, she wished Sophia was here, wished anyone besides Dennis and a Protectorate member she had only met _once_ were the ones going on her first functional patrol. But, unfortunately, despite complaints and attempts to get things rearranged, Sophia had been scheduled for a patrol that overlapped with the one she was on currently, and the person who scheduled the patrols had been less than willing to compromise or switch things around, seeing as it - Saturday - was the last day of the week for the schedule.

“Just feel lucky we aren’t patrolling downtown,” Dennis piped up, his fingers tightened down around the edge of his seat, giving away his real feelings on the matter. “It’s worse.”

“How—” Another pothole, another lurch. Fax made an unpleasant face, her heels digging into the floor of the van in protest. “How exactly can it be worse?”

This, at least, she _did_ know about. “It’s where Purity mostly ‘patrols’,” she said, briefly relinquishing her grip on the armrest to make the requisite air quotes. “She gets into a lot of spats with anyone who isn’t white and ends up leaving pretty bad damage to the roads, sometimes bad enough to close it for a day. It’s basically _always_ congested down there, and the potholes are less holes and more valleys.”

Her commentary was met with stony, bewildered silence. Seeing as his mask covered his entire face - and god did she wish she had the same - she could read nothing from Dennis, but Fax at least looked a little horrified at the notion.

“It’s also always under construction for what should be obvious reasons,” Dennis added, as though in an afterthought. “Which makes it both very loud and covered in very throwable objects if we ended up running into a Brute or two.”

“They throw construction equipment at you,” Fax less asked, more said, tone forced flat.

She saw Dennis shrug out of the corner of her eye. “Had, will have. Menja and Fenja always like to do it, and Lung makes the occasional foray into the area.”

Again, that seemingly brought Fax up short. “You’ve fought _Lung_ ,” she said, voice unbelieving.

A twitch jolted across Dennis, nearly startling him out of his seat. “What?” he asked, sounding incredulous. “Do I look dead to you? Of course I haven’t. Even Piggy—er—got isn’t _that_ bad.”

Fax, rather rudely, pointed at her. “Volley’s fought Hookwolf!”

Taylor very firmly did not flinch, despite the burst of sensation and the lingering echoes of the fight flashing across the back of her eyes. Breathing in, she counted to three, then exhaled for three, just like she’d been taught. The memories faded, slipped from her focus, and her heart steadied down into a slow, smooth rhythm instead of insistently pounding against her ribcage.

“Volley’s a bit of an exception,” Dennis said, sounding both wry and noticeably frustrated by that admission. “I’ll admit, I’ve fought capes before. Most of the Wards have, we kinda _have_ to, but outside of Volley? Nobody has actually fought the main powerhouses behind the gangs.”

Small victories and all of that, she supposed. It did say something about how skewed people’s priorities were that it was a _good_ thing that they were ‘just’ being thrown at the possibly lethal members of violent gangs instead of the ones which could and would kill you if given the chance.

“Oh,” Fax breathed, sounding relieved. “Also, uh, sorry. Volley. If I made you uncomfortable.”

Taylor blinked. Had it been that obvious? Whatever, she could handle her inability to hide her discomfort later. “It’s fine.” She technically wasn’t lying because it was fine, kind of. Despite those memories, she was back to her equilibrium. She had to be. “I just would prefer if we didn’t talk about my fight with Hookwolf.”

Remarkably, for the first time she’d met him, Dennis actually kept his fucking mouth shut and didn’t try to defuse tension by making a joke about it. Fax, meanwhile, nodded very gently and offered a shaky, fragile little smile that was remarkably familiar, since it was the same sort of smile she’d been seeing in the mirror on occasion. It felt odd being on the other end of it, honestly, almost too intimate for her comfort levels.

“ _Patrol Delta, are you available?_ ” The voice jarred Taylor, shoved her out of the peaceful silence she had been enjoying until that point. Her earpiece crackled to life, a low murmur of interference that came with all radios, even the ones made by Tinkers.

Taylor glanced at Fax, a wordless question. She could see Dennis doing the same, just barely in the sight of her peripheral vision. The Wards weren’t allowed to decide to reroute patrols or take on tasks, it all came down to the Protectorate member that was with them at the time. Of course, sometimes patrols were done _only_ by Wards, in which case going ‘off-route’ was considered problematic, but could be justified after the fact, but still you couldn’t technically _agree_ to a request as a Ward.

“Sure are,” Fax finally offered, not sounding too sure of it herself. “Er, over.”

“ _We aren’t on a half-duplex system, Fax, you don’t have to say over. Just for future reference. Anyway, there’s currently a disturbance down by Friday’s Depot. Looks cape related, possibly a Tinker looking for resources. Are you willing to possibly engage?_ ”

Fax glanced at the two of them, expression pursed. After a moment of silence, she finally slumped a little. “Are we the only ones in range?”

“ _Seems like it. Next closest is Velocity, who isn’t suited for this sort of fight, and would take at least eighty additional seconds to arrive._ ”

Fax’s face cramped before, finally, looking almost reluctant, she spoke. “We can try. How long is it until we’ll arrive?”

“ _About fifteen seconds if the traffic watcher is accurate. Sending the update to your driver and turning this line live. No more ambient chatter, Clockblocker, Volley._ ”

“Roger,” Dennis said, an annoying cast to his voice, because of _course_ he needed to get the last word in.

To the person working the console’s credit, the only response to that was a resigned, unimpressed sigh. “ _Right, got confirmation. You’re on your way, give updates when you arrive and before you engage. If this is a new Tinker, we may have you only delay instead of attempting to subdue._ ”

* * *

Friday’s Depot was a chain of ‘home improvement’ stores, the sort of place you went to get two-by-fours and tools. It was, similarly, stereotyped to be the target of most low-level villainous Tinkers who needed resources, the sort of stereotype that got SNL gags done about it. It was such a prevalent thing that, when she had read the sole pinned thread on the Tinker PHO board - a ‘Tinkers 101’ - ‘DO NOT ROB FRIDAY’S DEPOT’ had been in all capitals at the very top of the post.

So, obviously, someone was robbing it.

A small crowd of civilians were clustered out near the front doors, stirring anxiously, empty carts either clutched close or left abandoned just off to the side of the crowd. Approaching, Fax to her left and Dennis to her right, Taylor could already hear the alarm, a loud wailing that was pitched _just_ high enough to be painful on the ears, even at a distance. Most stores had robbery alarms stuck in them nowadays, especially in Brockton, but goddamn she wished they’d chosen something other than the one which inspired images of nails being scraped down a blackboard.

“Time on PRT backup?” Fax asked, voice just barely audible over the alarm.

“ _Four minutes at the most. Traffic’s a bit congested, someone’s joyriding near Jackson Crescent._ ”

Fax’s face screwed up in annoyance, her head rotating back and forth, scanning across the crowd. “Crowd is blocking visuals,” she finally explained. “Permission to deploy the firestarter?”

“ _One moment._ ”

Drawing to a halt, Fax stretched one arm out across, making both herself and Dennis slow to a standstill. The alarm continued blaring off in the background, loud and hard on the ears, and the crowd continued to mill, not quite forcing their way back into the store, but carrying with them a sense that they were just waiting for the opportunity.

Glancing askance, towards Dennis, Taylor rolled back on her heels, trying to stifle the frantic energy in her legs, the urge to move and run and engage. “Isn’t it illegal to crowd around the front door of a place with burglary alarms going off?” She asked, pitching her voice as low as she could make it, hoping it didn’t get picked up by the mic.

Dennis’ head turned, the sun glinting across the reflective, blank surface of his full mask. “Maybe?” He said, not sounding terribly confident, his voice just as low. “If it’s anything like fire alarm regulation, _probably_? Why do you know about that, anyway?”

“It’s in the handbook,” Taylor hissed back, flashing a glance over her shoulder just to make sure Fax wasn’t paying attention to them. Luckily, she was too busy staring at the crowd with an increasingly cramped expression.

“Who reads the _handbook?_ ” Dennis cut in, sounding honestly bewildered.

Taylor bit down on the urge to step on his foot. “I wanted to know what the rules were—”

“ _Permission granted, Fax. Max size of eleven feet, you are free to disperse the crowd._ ”

Cutting herself off and turning, Taylor watched as Fax reached into one of her sleeves with one hand, pulling free a palm-sized disc. One side of the disc was red, the other black, and notably she was being very careful about not touching the black side. Stepping forward a few paces, Fax flipped her hand around so that the black side faced down and then let it drop, the disc of metal landing on the ground without a bounce. For a moment, nothing happened, before with a lengthy _hiss_ the disc unfolded, pulled apart, four rods pushed out from the cardinal directions of the disc, thin metal plates sliding along the surface until the disc had grown to cover four or five times its original size. The red side began to glow orange, growing ever-brighter, the low creak of metal echoing into the air before, with another loud hiss, a plume of fire erupted from the surface, shooting into the air in a way that inspired images of jet engines, a blue flame wicked with oranges and reds near the very tip, about as tall as Fax herself was.

“Step back,” Fax said, her voice firm. Taylor found herself doing so despite the urge to bristle, and Dennis was quick to follow along.

At first, the fire was just that— _fire_. Produced from a piece of bizarre tinkertech, sure, but nevertheless fire. But, almost palpably, it began to waver, shift, impressions of body parts, handprints, even faces beginning to press against the surface of the flame as though it was a thin film. It was hard to tell if it wasn’t just the fire flickering at first, too indistinct, but within seconds of the process starting the faces became more real, more solid. They were the faces of women, all sharing traits with one-another, vaguely familiar in the way that siblings were, but not quite identical, always something _off_ , different. The fire pulsed, bulged, and finally began to shape itself, the handprint becoming a hand, then an arm, then a shoulder and a body as a humanoid figure made entirely out of fire stepped out, feet hissing against the concrete. The figures which followed it were faster, taking half a second to pull themselves free, until there were four of them all told, the fire blinking out a few seconds later.

The figures of fire began to tread forward, moving independent of one another but in a way that was too seamless to be totally individual, Fax trailing after them. Glancing at Dennis, who had turned to look at her as well, Taylor watched as he shrugged and, without waiting for her, jogged to catch back up with Fax. Not seeing anything else to do, she trailed after him, reaching behind her to retrieve one of her balls, unclipping it from her belt with a sharp tug. She would only use it if she needed it, but that display had kinda made her think she probably would.

The crowd noticed the approaching fire people well before they actually arrived. The murmurs grew louder, almost panicked, before someone pointed at the PRT van they’d parked behind them and, with almost comical familiarity, everyone began pulling away from the front doors. A few people seemed more reluctant, clutching their carts, looking like they were going to try to rush the entrance, but quickly decided against it as Fax’s minions drew closer, pulling away and parting like a sea. The four minions took up a perimeter, keeping the crowd cut into two groups, while Fax herself came to a stop in the middle of the recently-cleared area.

“ _You are to evacuate the area for the time being!_ ” Fax announced, only audible over her earpiece, the alarm smothering her hearing, cutting everything out but the endless, painful wails. “ _This is an active crime scene, one currently in progress. Please disperse! I will not ask twice!_ ”

That, finally, jarred people into motion. The crowd fully dispersed, the few people with carts abandoning them where they stood, people walking back towards their cars or off towards the nearest bus stop. One person, a lady in her early forties with her hair pulled back into a painfully-tight looking ponytail, flipped them off as she passed back towards an expensive-looking Porsche, but that was about it in terms of resistance.

It was maybe another thirty seconds before the area was mostly cleared of people, with one or two stragglers sticking around near the parking lot. Out of the way, sure, but still possibly in the line of fire, which wasn’t great, but then it wasn’t like they could scare them off or anything. They weren’t here to herd civilians around, they were here because someone - likely a Tinker - was playing to stereotypes and robbing a construction store.

Which, speaking of. “Any visuals?” Taylor asked.

“ _Some knocked over shelves, some scorch marks, more than a few broken appliances. That’s about all I can see from here,_ ” Fax replied, sounding a bit pensive. “ _Should we go inside?_ ”

“ _Negative_ ,” the person manning the console quickly cut in. “ _Do not enter. If this is an unknown, we can’t risk anyone getting into range of them_.”

“ _Roger,_ ” Fax replied, growing silent. “ _There’s a few sources of heat moving around in there, but I can’t tell if any of them are the burglar or just the staff. Any recommendations for approach?_ ”

There was another moment of radio silence.

“ _The best option right now is just watchin—_ ”

The front doors exploded, an eruption of force that sent shrapnel skittering across the ground. Thankfully, she’d been far enough away from the doors themselves to avoid getting hit with any of it, but Fax hadn’t been so lucky, both of her arms thrown up to catch a flurry of broken glass across her sleeves, yelping in pain and stumbling back, though whether due to the cuts or the force of the blast wasn’t clear.

A figure blurred through the opening, wearing sleek power armour that had some sort of jet-like propulsion system arrayed across his back. The power armour was predominantly green, with golden stripes framing the chest and connecting up each of the little engines that ran along the back. Following him was a small train of carts, about four or five, stacked high with appliances already torn out of the box, crammed together into piles. Surrounding the carts was a larger array of glowing orbs, with a huge disc seemingly sitting in the center of the swarm, glowing brightly and, weirdly enough, almost distorting the air around it.

“ _Contact!_ ” Fax yelled, and like a gunshot, the world screamed into motion.

Taylor scrambled forward, the tinker hurtling past, the distance between himself and her almost too far. She pitched her arm back, let her power worm its way into her skull, the ease it came to her almost uncanny. She could see the line, feel it, but she was losing _time_ , losing her chance. Before she could think twice about it, before she could consider the ramifications of trying to break a piece of tinkertech nobody really had any name for, she _threw_ , the ball leaving her hand, whistling through the air and shattering through the edge of the hoop like a dinner plate. The orbs dropped, their glow flickering out, and with them all four carts, toppling over into a spin as they dropped the eight or so feet of air they’d ridden, microwaves and toaster ovens hitting the ground, shattering like eggs, turned into little more than scrap.

The Tinker - Chariot, she thought, she could barely remember the dossier on him she’d crammed for just before her first patrol, his power armour fit, so did the orbs - froze in the air. He turned slowly, glanced down at her, and although his mask was on, covering his entire face, she could more than _feel_ his stare.

“Oh, you _bitch_!” He screamed, voice distorted, made louder by some unseen voice modulator. It warped his voice, made anything pitched higher than neutral into a squeal, loud and painful on the ears, almost indecipherable, all the tension in his voice turned into something like a feedback whine. Lashing his arm out in something that you could almost call a punch, fist pointed at her, a small collection of little compartments flipped open, orbs similar the ones which had been surrounding the carts leaping out of his suit, though these ones were an identical gold to the detailing on his power armour, rather than the blue of the now-scrapped ring.

“ _Unknown parahuman!_ ” Fax began, voice loud, Chariot - she _assumed_ \- snapping his head around. “ _You are under arrest, please do not resist!_ ”

“ _Shut up!_ ” Chariot yelled back, his hand lashing back around, the orbs following the motion. “Fuck off you _ugly fucking bitch!_ ” He opened his hand and the orbs _leapt_ , blurring through the air as golden streaks. Fax scrambled to the side, but the orbs curved to follow her, the first to get close being quickly batted to the side by one of her minions, only for that same minion to explode into a blast of smoke as another golden orb swung in from the side and passed right through it.

Turning away from Fax and to her, Chariot began to approach, the engines along his spine and his elbows whining as they picked up speed. Clockblocker fidgeted beside her, glancing repeatedly towards the swarm of golden orbs still being avoided and fought off by Fax’s dwindling minions, now down to two from four.

“ _Patrol Delta, what’s your current status?_ ”

Taylor swallowed dryly, stepping backwards. “We’ve engaged with who I think is Chariot. He’s outfitted with floating orbs and a set of power armour, and he was attempting to steal appliances from Friday’s Depot. Fax is currently being worn down by some of his orbs, while he is attempting to approach myself and Clockblocker.” It felt odd speaking like that, speaking like a rote report despite the chaos and noise, the wail of an alarm, the sound of those fucking balls whistling through the air like little hornets.

“ _Informing the incoming backup. Please be advised, Chariot is assumed to be—_ ” The rest of what the person behind the console was trying to say was buried beneath the sudden scramble to get away, Chariot’s body rocketing forward, accelerating far beyond he had been, slamming down into the concrete just where she and Dennis had been, metal boots screeching across the concrete as he slipped into a skid.

Dennis lanced forward, fingers passing through air as Chariot slid to the side, the metal screaming and sparking beneath his feet but seeming no worse for wear.

“Nice miss,” he commented, his voice mechanical, distorted. Slowly, ominously, he lifted off, pulling fully out of Dennis’ range. Taylor’s hand went to her belt, retrieved one of her nets, coiled and ready. “Moron. Fuck, you’d think someone with a power like yours would actually know how to _use_ it.”

Dennis said nothing, not even bristling. He lowered his center of gravity, legs spread, arms at the ready, just in case. Chariot just _laughed_ , a harsh, warped rattling, mocking and cruel.

“And you,” he said, head snapping around to Taylor. She glanced at Dennis, tapped her leg with her fingers, then pointed up at the floating Chariot, keeping her hand at her side when she did. Dennis nodded. “I didn’t know they rebranded vigilantes into fucking _Instagram fit girls_ ,” he sneered, voice thick with derision. “The only benefit is that your ass looks nice in something that isn’t a fucking lumpy goddamn gimp suit.”

Heat crawled over her face, into her ears, but it wasn’t really _embarrassment_. Her stomach twisted, churned, and she felt something she hadn’t in a while, something that made her fingers tighten around her net until they hurt: rage. It was hard to describe, the mix of his tone of voice and the topic he chose, the way he was choosing to insult her. It would’ve been fine if he’d called her a coward, called her a weak or a sell-out for getting with the Wards, but this?

“That’s rich coming from the stereotypical moron who _robs a Friday’s Depot_ ,” she spat out, not quite able to hold it back.

“ _Volley, do not_ —”

Chariot flashed forward, accelerating again, closing the gap between them before she could move. His metal fist hit her stomach, slamming the breath out of her lungs, her entire body curling around it. It hurt, it _fucking hurt it hurt it hurt_ and she couldn’t breathe and _she was going to choke and_ —choking on everything, on that fear and the unpleasantness of him being in her space and her lungs refusing to move, she lashed her arm out, wrapped the net around Chariot and _pulled down_.

He didn’t budge, but then he didn’t need to. Dennis sprinted forward, his hand slamming into the net, freezing it.

Chariot finally reacted, his fist pulling away, Taylor stumbling back, wheezing out choked breaths as the thrusters along his suit erupted with force, tried to fly away only for the net itself to sink into the armour, carving furrows if only because they were spatially and temporally locked. The thrusters died out, his feet landing back on the ground with a loud clatter.

Wrapping a hand around her gut, Taylor breathed out, tried to regain her breath. It came achingly, slowly, each exhale giving her a little more. It hurt, it _hurt it hurt it hurt_. She hated it, hated not breathing, felt nausea swim in her stomach, felt her brain suffocate, felt it all burn like acid.

“You fucking bitch! What the fuck is _wrong_ with you? I spent so much time and fucking resources on this thing!” Chariot sounded livid, his entire body vibrating, the little gaps where the net had carved furrows sparking and hissing like a live wire.

“You’re under arrest,” Dennis replied, sounding less enthusiastic, more professional, but with a flatness to his voice that made Taylor think he was holding something back. “Please do not resist.”

Chariot snarled, the noise translated into something that sounded like metal creaking. “No, fuck this!” He snapped, and Dennis started to approach faster, his hand outstretched, ready to touch him through the gaps in the net. “Fuck all of this, fuck this bitch, fuck you, and fuck this goddamn net!” The suit exploded into a burst of light, blinding and loud, and Dennis’ fingers passed through the air, glanced off of a falling piece of armour, the suit hitting the ground in pieces, Chariot missing completely from it. 

Teleportation. Great.

Glancing around, Taylor caught sight of Fax slowly hauling herself to her feet, parts of her face bruised, not a single minion in sight. Fax started towards her, limping slightly with each step, but at a hurried pace that more than conveyed her concern.

“Someone tell the store to turn off the alarm,” Dennis muttered, barely audible.

A second later, the alarm did just that, the silence that came with it accompanied by a low ringing in her ears, like television static but so much worse. She wanted to crawl out of her skin, but didn’t, forced herself to accept the pain, the difficulty breathing, she accepted all of it, and still couldn’t quite bring herself to think that she overcame it.

“Volley?” Fax murmured, coming to a wobbly stop just in front of her. She crouched down, got on her level. “You okay?”

Trying to stand, her stomach gave a painful, powerful twist, nearly knocking her legs out from under her. It really hurt, she could already imagine the bruise welling across the surface of her skin. Another mark, another lingering pain, so uncomfortably familiar. “No,” she choked out, hating herself a bit for how shaky the word came. “I’m not.”

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

It was hard to miss when Gambit hit a place. For starters, it was generally on fire, and not by any small amount. Even before they’d gotten Spitfire, Circus had been plenty fucking prone to putting everything to the torch, and _after_ getting Spitfire, the awful group in question had taken to literally burning holes through walls on their way out. Seriously, _fuck_ Spitfire, she was almost as bad as Grue, couldn’t get within thirty feet without being set on fucking _fire_ with the parahuman equivalent of napalm. Crazy bitch.

“We’ve got eyes on them, console,” Carlos called out, floating a bit off to her right. Below them, true to his words, a building was in the process of being consumed by a blaze of fire, surrounded by pockets of deep shadow which clumped together if they came too close. “Or at least, on where they probably are,” he amended.

That was the thing about Gambit. In the grand scheme of things? A small-time group full of people without particularly interesting powers. A grab-bag, a person who makes regions of darkness, and a crazy pyrokinetic. They had some stopping power, sure, Spitfire was again fucking _horrifying_ to fight because her power clearly only had the ‘melt concrete’ setting, and Circus could dance circles around the average thick-skulled moron who tried to stop them from robbing their shit, but altogether they shouldn’t really be as big as they are.

No, the reason why Gambit had gotten so far was _synergy_. Circus and Grue had been a pair that nobody liked to fight, because Circus didn’t need to rely on sight to still be perfectly good at kicking someone’s teeth in. That was, as far as anyone could tell, their main power out of the handful they had, some sort of spatial awareness Thinker bullshit that meant she could comfortably turn someone into a pincushion despite being in Grue’s godawful fucking power. Add in Spitfire and Circus’ ability to control where that fire goes with accuracy that could be comfortably described as ‘way too fucking high’ and would you look at that when in a group they’re a fucking menace to fight.

It didn’t help that Grue was part of that team, all things considered. She really, _really_ disliked him, viscerally even. It might not be fair to do so, but the first time she’d met him she’d been two years into being a Ward and he’d fucked her up for over a week by strategically placing a pocket of shadow right next to the ledge she’d tried to glide off of using her power. Which, you know, because his power was such a fucking awful piece of shit, made her experience a brief moment of excruciating pain before her power had _turned off without her wanting it to_ and she’d fallen well over ten feet and broke both of her legs.

“ _Any direct line of sight on Gambit?_ ” Missy’s voice asked. Poor Missy, she did understand not throwing a twelve year old into the thick of things, but they could probably throw her a bone and let her patrol with them more often rather than being chained to the console most of the time. Maybe it would make her stop complaining so much, which would be really nice because _holy fuck_ could Missy complain.

“I’m going to circle around the building,” Carlos said in return, eyes flicking back to her. “Shadow Stalker, you stay here with Kid Win. I’ll be right back.”

After the whole ‘falling off the top of the building’, she’d been pretty much banned from using her power in high places when Grue was in the area, which made _actually doing her fucking job_ really difficult. Despite that, she didn’t chew Carlos out for assuming, didn’t spit on his shoes and tell him to go and fuck himself, and just nodded.

Chris, meanwhile, remained silent, because he was supportive like that and probably kinda figured she was a hair off from shooting darts wildly through the _goddamn windows_.

Carlos swooped forward in all of his Alexandria package glory. Fuck Brutes, really, she had to deal with being basically incredibly weak to shit like lightning, pepper spray, high concentrations of heat, fucking _Grue_ , but there he went, basically adapting to any problem. Hell, if she had to make a guess, she’d put good money on him being able to adapt a way to sense shit in Grue’s power if he just sat there for long enough.

Chris nudged her shoulder with his own. “Don’t stress,” he murmured. “We’ll be fine.”

Sophia said nothing, because saying something would probably get her in shit with Armsmaster again for teaching Missy the litany of curses she had at her disposal.

“ _Got visuals on one, it’s an unknown_ ,” Carlos’ voice crackled along the line, voice kept oh-so-professional, like he actually tried to live up to the hype of being the leader of the Wards. “ _Young girl, thirteen or fourteen at most, costume is a bodysuit that looks burned, a hood, and a full hockey mask with lenses set in where the eyes are supposed to be. She appears to have a knife._ ”

...Oh for fucks sake if Gambit got _another fucking cape she would_ —

“ _Hey, piggy!_ ” A voice called out, just barely picked up by Carlos’ mic.

“ _Unidentified parahuman, you are_ —”

“ _Oink for me_.”

Carlos swerved suddenly, slamming into the wall first before his flight cut out entirely, sending him tumbling through the air and into the concrete.

“Master-Stranger protocols!” Sophia called out, scrambling to her feet. The rest of Gambit, the aforementioned girl in tow, exploded out the front wall, sending a good pile of bricks right onto Carlos, though she was pretty sure it wasn’t enough to put him down.

“ _Shadow Stalker?_ ” Missy’s voice called over the line, sounding more than a little concerned. “ _Status?_ ”

“Aegis fell out of the air and into the building,” Sophia found herself saying, grimacing as Gambit made a mad scramble away. She brought up her arm, twisting her fingers to get the crossbow to unlock, but Chris’ hand came to rest on her arm, pushing it down. She shot him a look, but he just shook his head and pointed at Carlos, who was carefully hauling himself out of the pile of bricks. “He was seen and addressed by a girl in a costume, who then said, to quote, ‘hey, piggy. Oink for me.’ After which, he lost control of his flight, rammed into the wall, and then fell.”

The pockets of shadow began to recede, pulling away as the fire roared its way up the remainder of the building. Gambit was already out of sight, not that she could’ve chased after them anyway. Any chance at a Master being part of a group, an unknown Master at that, and it was just generally agreed upon policy that you don’t engage until you can be sure of the specifics of the power. Nobody wanted another repeat of Heartbreaker’s first major reveal in Canada, after all.

“ _I’m okay,_ ” Carlos’ voice echoed along the line, sounding winded and pained. “ _I... shit. Yeah, I guess MS protocols should go into play. Dropping the line, I’ll wait for pick up. Are they sending a separate van?_ ”

“ _Yup_ ,” Missy replied, not sounding very happy about it. “ _Twenty-four hours in the tank, I think? That’s code for first encounters with Masters, right?_ ”

Carlos didn’t reply, though Sophia had a line on him. Finally out of the pile of bricks, he just sorta... _moped_ , stumbling for a bit before sitting his fat ass down on the rubble, just a bit too close to the blazing fire currently consuming the antique store, bringing his hands up to comb through what hair his costume left visible, looking less than impressed with himself.

“ _It’s twelve, actually,_ ” Chris piped up, sounding shaky. “ _But they’ll probably want twenty-four, all things considered_.”


	31. C-TRACK 3.7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor and Sophia get debriefed.

“It’s going to bruise pretty badly,” the nurse began, latex-covered hands gently prodding at the ever-darkening patch of discoloured skin around her stomach. “But nothing seems broken, though we’ll have to wait for the X-rays to come in, just to be sure.”

Taylor swallowed, tried very hard to keep her face blank. She was out of her costume again, back in the stiff, somewhat scratchy confines of PRT-issued sweats with accompanying imitation visor to help conceal her identity. She’d had to ruck her shirt up to her ribcage to give the nurse access, but the closeness, the vulnerability of being out of costume - almost out of the sweatshirt they’d shoved into her arms after she’d come in, still not entirely able to breathe - scraped against her sensibilities.

The nurse - an older woman, early fifties, her hair having already gone salt-and-pepper, so wavy that it almost formed ringlets, framing olive-toned skin - smiled professionally at her, stepping away. “You can put your shirt down now,” she commented, almost absently, peeling the blue plastic gloves from her hands. “I’m going to sign off on you being around for the debriefing, unless you have any concerns whatsoever?”

Uncurling her fingers, Taylor let the sweatshirt drop back down, the fabric brushing feather-light over the raised region of skin, the bruise, drawing out a short hiss of surprised pain. Her stomach prickled, pins and needles that radiated out in painful spasms whenever it made contact with something other than the air. Bending over was a no-go too, though she’d already figured that out before she’d been hauled bodily to the medical wing when she tried to pick up the ball she’d chucked at Chariot’s godawful hoop _thing_ and ended up on the ground, her stomach cramping in wild bursts that had Fax and Dennis panicked.

“I don’t,” she finally mustered, wincing reflexively as the vibrations in her chest set off another flutter of discomfort in her stomach. The nurse made a sympathetic noise, lips pursing as she turned away and towards the metal cart she’d brought with her, rummaging through one of the shelves. “It’s just a bit sore, is all.”

Speaking truthfully, she was just glad that she’d gotten her breath back. The pain was one thing, she was used to blocking out pains, aches, lingering muscle-deep bruising. She could disconnect from that, had plenty of experience doing so despite how uncomfortable it made her feel. No, it was the way that she hadn’t been able to breathe, the way that her lungs had fought mulishly against each inhale and exhale that had set her teeth on edge.

The nurse turned back, a small, thimble-like plastic cup held between two fingers, two red pills contained within it. “It’s just ibuprofen,” she explained belatedly, pressing the cup forward until Taylor was more or less obligated to take it. The nurse ducked down, reached beneath the very bottom shelf of the cart, pulling out a bizarrely small bottle of water, like the tiny soda bottles you’d sometimes see being sold in huge boxes for Halloween. That, too, was pushed into her hands insistently, the firm set of the nurse’s jaw brooking no argument. “Take them, please, I’ll be noting it down on your health sheet. They last for six hours, and they’re extra-strength.”

With both hands occupied, Taylor resorted to grasping the cap of the bottle between her molars and twisting until the seal broke, ignoring the humorous look the nurse set her. Tipping the plastic cup back, she let both of the red pills drop into her mouth and washed it back with the entire bottle. After handing the plastic bottle and cup back to the nurse, who then dropped both of them into a garbage bag hanging from a hook on the cart, she worked herself off the lip of the bed and rose to a stand, wincing the entire time, her stomach protesting wildly at the strain.

“Be careful on your way out!” The nurse called out over one shoulder, already busying herself with what looked like a pad of sanitation wipes.

Taylor just inclined her head, not trusting herself to speak as she made careful step after step towards the door, adjusting to the pressure and bone-deep ache in her stomach. Wobbling a bit as she reached the door, she pressed one hand against the frame and clutched the knob with the other, twisting once and pulling the door open.

Sophia halted mid-step, head whipping around to stare at her. Chris, lips pulled into a tight line, stumbled as he broke his stride, nearly slamming bodily into Sophia’s back, only just managing to skirt around her. Despite the mask, she could all but _feel_ the inspection she was getting from Sophia, the slight little twitches of her head, breaking the total stillness of her body, giving the game away.

“Oh, Shadow Stalker!” The nurse called out again, her voice a bit hoarse. “If you’re going towards where they’re debriefing for patrols today, would you be a dear and help Volley over? She’s walking like my daughter did during some really bad growing pains, she might need the support.”

Taylor froze, Chris froze, hell the entire damn _world_ could’ve frozen. She felt anger and humiliation colour the back of her neck, reach around to scrape across the skin of her cheeks, heat spilling into the pores of her skin and pressing out insistently, trying to escape. She opened her mouth, thoughtless words already on her mind, something mean crawling up from her gut, something barbed and sharp that she would stab into someone, something unacceptable, something about her daughter or some way to deflect the focus of the—

“Sure,” Sophia replied easily, her tone close to blank. “We were just heading that way ourselves.”

Taylor’s mouth shut with a click, teeth-against-teeth, almost bared. “I’m fine,” she hissed out, fingers curling into talons at her side, barely stopped from forming fists.

That earned her a click of the tongue, the noise slightly distorted due to Sophia’s mask. “You’re not,” she decided almost imperiously, and Taylor felt the anger lick at her skin, the way her hair stood on end, goosebumps crawling over her arms as she swallowed down the anger. “But,” she continued, pausing for effect, her voice softening. “If you think you can make it on your own, I’m going to at least tag along.”

Closing her mouth, she bit down on more barbed words, hurtful things on the tip of her tongue. She breathed in, out, ignored the twinge of tight agony from her stomach, tried to cycle her breathing, tried to calm. It worked, abstractly, each breath a relief, loosening the knot, but it wasn’t enough to settle her, not enough to make the goosebumps recede back into her body. “Fine.”

“Thank you!” The nurse called out again, voice tinged with warmth.

Sophia glanced away, hands tucked into her pockets. “Yeah, yeah,” she said, voice transitioning into a mutter, spoken dismissively beneath her breath. Glancing back at her one last time, Sophia inclined her head in a nod towards Chris before taking a step forward, then another, Taylor stumbling after her, discomfort prickling at her senses, receding fully as she felt herself adjust to the pain levels, begin to move differently, compensating for the wound.

The first stretch of hallway was fine. It hurt, and the silence stifled her like nothing else, but she managed it without breaking down into gasping wheezes, a definite triumph considering she had just been sucker-punched by a guy in a full suit of power armour. The second stretch was significantly less so, starting first with cramps in her stomach, little twinges that grew and grew and grew until her steps faltered and she had to lash out with one arm, catching herself on the wall before she could topple fully.

Sophia stopped, turned to stare at her.

Taylor tucked her arm protectively around her stomach, forcing herself to breathe shallowly, working the oxygen back into her system. Her vision swam, freckled with dark motes, tunnelling around the edges, but it receded as the cramps and pain did, as each breath became easier and less like she was about to collapse in on herself at any moment.

“Can I touch you?” Sophia whispered, her voice suddenly so close. Taylor felt herself freeze, a spasm in her stomach reminding her why tensing was such a bad idea. “It’s okay if not, it’s just...”

 _You look like you need help_. Taylor set her jaw, fingers clawing at the wall for a moment as she tried to steady herself, tried not to take it as an insult. It wasn’t one, it was Sophia caring, it was _weakness_ but Sophia wasn’t intending to call her weak. She cared, she wanted to help, she wanted to protect, and still it _rankled_ , made her want to bare her teeth, lash out like a wild animal for all that her body folded like a wet piece of tissue paper whenever she exerted it too much.

“No,” Taylor finally got out, and she wasn’t lying, not really. She couldn’t be touched right now, couldn’t take soft hands and grasps and comfortable warmth. It wasn’t okay, reminded her too much of how Brent used to structure things, how she’d realized he’d follow up his abuse with positivity, praise, hugs, kisses, things to placate her, to reinforce the cycle. “No, not right now, I’ll manage.”

“Alright,” Sophia conceded, mask not quite able to hide the concern, nor the resignation. “We can take it slow, right Kid?”

Chris startled a little, twitched like he hadn’t expected to be included. Thinking about it, they had gotten caught up in one another, he probably _hadn’t_. “Yeah,” he said confidently, a loose smile on his face, relaxed, tensionless. “Yeah, we can take it slow.”

Taylor pushed off from the wall, felt the ache begin to build back in her stomach as she took a step forward. Wordlessly, Sophia complied, working back into a steady pace, leaving her and Chris to follow after.

* * *

Settling into her seat, Taylor breathed out through her nose, feeling more haggard than she had been when she first arrived to get her stomach checked over. It had taken more than a few stops to let her catch her breath at the beginning of the trip up to the debriefing room, though it had gotten significantly easier as the pills started to work, blunting the pain and forestalling her body’s constant cramping.

The debriefing room wasn’t the one she’d gone to when she had her first patrol. It was, for starters, significantly smaller, shaped like a perfect square with half of the room being taken up by chairs while the other half had a place for the person overlooking the debriefing to sit behind a desk. There were a few other things, the room had an assortment of filing cabinets, about three or four, but not enough to seem like they got much actual use. There were windows on two walls due to the room being at the corner of the building, letting in a constant shower of light that caught glittering dust on the air.

Director Piggot, at the front of the room, leaned back in her leather chair, hands folded tightly in her lap. Her face was blank, but her posture belied how she felt, the stiffness of her arms, the way she sat ramrod straight, like she was barely restraining herself from hopping out of her chair and yelling. It put the room on edge, made the air thick with tension, even as she said and did nothing.

Sophia sat down in the seat right beside her, close enough that she was present, but not reaching for her hand. That was part of their dynamics, their interactions, she was the one who initiated the touching, the comforting, and she wasn’t really in the mood for it. Her fingers tensed, tightened, then relaxed rhythmically, trying to work through the pressure she felt building in her body, the need to be out in the open, to scream and shout.

Turning away from her thoughts, pressing them into the back of her mind, Taylor tried her best to focus. The room wasn’t occupied by many, totalling herself, Sophia, Fax, Dennis, Chris and Missy. On a screen behind Director Piggot’s desk, mounted to the wall, she could just barely see Carlos in what looked like a padded cell, staring up at the ceiling with a blank expression on his face.

“Now that we’re all here,” Director Piggot finally began, breaking the silence in the room, but not the tension. “We can begin. Shadow Stalker, give your report.”

Sophia rose, her chair screeching as it skid across the linoleum floors, drawing a wince out of most of the room. “We were on a routine patrol of the area surrounding Greenhill Senior when an arson report came in,” Sophia began, her voice holding steady even as everyone focused on her. “It was a pretty typical hit for Gambit. Pockets of darkness left around the entrances and exits, though they were hitting an antique store, alongside a good portion of the building being on fire. Aegis wanted to scope them out, and because of rules that were _decided for me_ —”

“Shadow Stalker,” Director Piggot interrupted, voice flat. “We are not here to talk about your personal allowances. Remain on topic.”

Sophia tensed, fingers tightening into fists at her side. For a moment Taylor considered reaching out and taking it, trying to soothe, but her skin screamed at the notion, crawled with discomfort, and she instead folded her hands together in her lap, nails digging in around her knuckles, leaving red crescents.

To her credit, though, Sophia regained her composure, her figure loosening as she worked through whatever was going on in her head. “Due to rules surrounding my power usage, I was not allowed to accompany him as he flew in to do recon. Kid Win remained behind with me, prepared to open fire if they tried to make a break for it, and Aegis continued his search. He eventually came upon a young girl wearing a hockey mask and a bodysuit with a hood that, to quote, ‘looked burnt’. She made a disparaging comment towards him, told him to ‘oink for her’, and then he lost control of his flight, slamming into the building and then falling to the ground. I made a call for Master-Stranger protocols, and in compliance with the rules surrounding engagement with new possible Masters, when Gambit fled, we did not attempt to engage or follow.”

Before Taylor could even process it, Director Piggot was picking up where Sophia had left off. “Aegis gave some information on the power,” she paused for a moment, scanning over them with a quick flick of her eyes. “He claims his loss of control was that he, quote, ‘forget how to fly or regulate his own strength’, with said feeling becoming more pronounced over time. As far as he’s told us, he apparently has control over his powers now, even showed us he could fly when pressed, but we’re going to be keeping him until tomorrow as we’re not sure if there’s more to the power than that.”

The tension drained out of her, breath whooshing out loud enough that it got a twitch out of Sophia. The last thing Brockton needed was a Master, not to mention the deeply uncomfortable notion of being controlled by someone like that. She couldn’t let it happen, not to her, not to anyone else. She had enough of people controlling her against her will, plucking at her strings like she was a puppet and they wanted her to dance, to be what _they_ wanted.

“Any further commentary?” Director Piggot asked, scanning over the crowd.

Missy twitched, raised her hand slowly. “Is she part of Gambit? What are we going to call her? What about her powers, do we even really _know_ what they are?”

“We’re assuming she’s working with them,” Director Piggot replied easily. “We’re going with Lotophage for her name for now, and as far as we can tell from one interaction? A tentative belief that she can make people forget how to use their powers, or possibly important skills.”

“Isn’t that similar to Victor?” Fax asked, Taylor glancing over just in time to catch her pinch her brows together like she was trying to draw something from memory. “He steals skills, right? And he went missing recently, we haven’t seen him at all, even when he might be useful.”

“Has anyone here experienced the skill drain?” Dennis asked, his voice perplexingly serious.

Sophia pulled her chair back in, the same metal screeching startling everyone into silence. “I don’t think he’s used it on Wards before,” she said after she sat back down, the slight twist to her lips giving away how intentional the act was. “So we don’t have a good reference for how it might feel, and last time I checked, Victor wasn’t a fourteen-year-old black girl.”

“How do you know she’s black?” Dennis fired right back.

Sophia visibly bristled at him, spine straightening, fingers tensing around the edge of her chair. “I saw her hair, for starters—”

“Stalker, lots of people have that type of hair—”

“If you’d let me finish, I also saw her actual skin—”

“Are you sure?”

“Clockblocker you _weren’t even there_ , yes I am fuc— _freaking_ sure—”

“Well you never know, you could be wrong—”

“I’m _not_ —”

“Enough!” Piggot barked out harshly, annoyance rising into her tone, her jaw gritting. “Baseless speculation will get none of you _anywhere_. You are not researchers, the topic of her power is _over_. We will pick it up later, during a more formal meeting to discuss whether or not there are connections, but until then, _we are debriefing._ Stop acting like children.”

Sophia folded her arms over her chest, flicking her head to the side, looking away from her and the rest of the table. Taylor could just barely make out the creak as her fingers tightened down around the leather of her costume, the anger and aggression all but leaking off of her. Dennis was little better, as despite being functionally impossible to tell his expression, every single part of his body screamed discomfort, screamed that sort of low-simmering agitation that made people defensive, prone to arguing just for the sake of it. It suffocated the room, almost made it hard to breathe.

Glancing off to the side, just to look away from the spat, Taylor watched Missy slump, watch her eyes shutter over, going flat as they flicked between Dennis and Sophia. She looked hurt, resigned, all bottled up. There was no direction she could look in that wasn’t affected, not at Director Piggot or at the monitor of Aegis locked away in Master-Stranger isolation, not at Sophia who was bristling or at Dennis who was looking for a reason to be upset, to lash out. She couldn’t even look at Fax, the purpled bruises mottling some of her skin, her face, making her stomach twist.

She could’ve done better, _should’ve_. Next time she would have to, she’d prepare, have countermeasures, _something_ to make sure things didn’t go so bad next time.

“Fax,” Director Piggot grit out, stretching the name out into something that could’ve been a curse in another language for all the emotion it was spoken with. “Report. Now.”

Fax stumbled to her feet, her left leg carrying a limp. Taylor cringed, glanced at the floor if only because it was the last thing she could think of.

“We were in a patrol van, doing the circuit around the major commercial and industrial regions. We were on-call for robberies in the region along with muggings and basic misconduct. A class-2 patrol,” Fax started, fumbling over her words a little, her tone almost robotic, too stiff to be natural.

Director Piggot just waved her hand on, looking almost dismissive.

“There was a report of a break-in, a Tinker robbing a Friday’s. We arrived, received some basic information on what we were looking for and were told not to engage until we could determine if the Tinker was one we knew or not. There was a crowd of civilians present, which I dispersed using the brazier that I had built for me by Lantern in Brockton. After the people were dispersed with no resistance, I attempted to look in through the main doors, hoping to get visuals on the Tinker in question, using my ability to sense heat in hopes of triangulating his location, however several staff members were still in the store at the time, and I couldn’t make out which one was the Tinker and which wasn’t.”

There was a pause, Fax visibly collecting herself, bandaged hands - she hadn’t noticed those - coming together in front of her, one thumb smoothing over the creases on her index finger.

“Chariot, as we identified belatedly, set off a small explosive device that blew out the front doors. I was wounded when protecting my face from the glass shrapnel, and was unable to respond in time to catch him when he flew out the front doors. He had with him a large hoop that was connected to a series of orb-shaped drones that did something to a collection of shopping carts to let them fly. Volley threw one of her balls and shattered the hoop before he could get away, causing the orbs to lose power and drop all of the electronics he was attempting to steal at the time.”

Another pause, Fax working her fingers together tightly, pain flashing over her face, but not physical. She looked sad, upset, guilty. Taylor felt her stomach drop.

“I told him he was under arrest, and he responded by screaming profanities and launching a collection of orbs connected to his power armour at me, which I was forced to fend off. He then turned on Volley and Clockblocker, harassing them, particularly Volley, during which I lost all of my minions and his orbs started to land hits on me. Following this, he hit Volley in the stomach, and Volley took advantage of the proximity to catch him with the net, after which Clockblocker froze it. He then yelled more profanities and used what appeared to be an emergency teleport, leaving behind the scraps of his body armour but not himself, escaping capture.”

The room was silent for a few moments, Director Piggot staring at them with something like muted, blank frustration on her face. After a long, tense moment, she sighed, reaching up with one hand to pinch the bridge of her nose, eyes shutting, looking almost pained by all of that. “What was recoverable from the tech?” She finally asked.

“The hoops and the orbs connected to it still had circuitry in them,” Fax began slowly, sounding worried. “But the power armour teleported more than just him. Most of the internal components were ripped with it, all that was really left was a lot of wiring, the mechanical parts, and the armour.”

“So nothing,” Director Piggot cut in.

Fax inclined her head. “Almost nothing,” she compromised.

Director Piggot opened her eyes, head craned back a bit. “Chariot has been throwing his weight around recently,” she explained slowly, speaking less at them and more in general. “This is partly due to being a teenage boy with impossibly high-tech equipment, and partly due to him having recently upgraded most of his equipment to a significant degree. This is the _second_ time since the riots that he’s been involved in the large-scale robbery of electronics. I’ve seen some of the camera footage of the fight itself, and I think we can begin to worry ourselves about whether or not he’s building something much larger than what we’ve been used to. Does anyone have any commentary on my train of thought?”

“He was really upset when Volley shot down all of those electronics,” Dennis said aloud, voice still simmering in agitation. “But it didn’t seem like it was life-ruining? He just seemed upset and frustrated that he was slighted.”

“Yes, well, when equipped to their best, Tinkers tend to feel that way when someone proves they’re _still human_ , despite the superiority complex,” Director Piggot remarked, and Taylor couldn’t quite help the flinch that jolted across her shoulders at the knot of venom in her voice. “Anyone else have something to say about this?”

Dennis bristled, and so did Chris, who was staring holes into the floor, face twisted into an uncanny display of anger. It didn’t suit him, looked wrong over what would normally be lax, loose features.

“No? Then you’re dismissed. I’m expecting written reports from everyone here on my desk sometime within the next two days, written _to code_.”

* * *

**B-SIDE**

* * *

It was cold as fuck out, but it was hard to care that much about it. She’d shed her costume after the rush to get out of the debriefing room, all but _running goddamn away_ from Taylor. Her head was a mess, a complete fucking travesty, and the last damn thing she needed was to infect Taylor with it. She’d been fucking _seconds_ away from slugging Dennis, from breaking his freckled nose and revelling in it. The only thing that’d really stopped her from acting on the impulse had been a mix between not wanting to get in _yet more shit_ from the queen fucking pig herself and Taylor being in the way.

Which, really, said something about her mood.

Reaching up, Sophia dragged her fingers through her hair, fluffing the sweat out. Fucking Dennis, fucking _patrols_ , fucking goddamn Gambit and their new goddamn cape. Fuck _everything_ right about now, fuck the way that the debriefing had gone down, fuck the way that Chariot had hurt Taylor, fuck the fact that she couldn’t really trust herself to call her therapist _or_ Emma without exploding on them.

Calm, she had to get calm but it was really _goddamn_ difficult to achieve that when around every goddamn _fucking corner she expected Dennis to try to start that fucking argument up again_ —

“Sophia?”

She just about cleared the goddamn sound barrier snapping her head around, eyes focusing on a head peeking around the corner of the building. Taylor, now wearing a winter jacket thrown over her sweats and shoes, stared timidly at her, one hand clasping the wall while the other remained tucked firmly around her stomach.

Sophia glanced away, focused on the ugly fucking shitty pigeons flocking on one of the exhaust vents connected to the PRT HQ just above her.

She could hear Taylor shuffling, the nervous scrape of the heel of her shoe across the concrete. It would’ve been endearing had she been anything but _absolutely fucking infuriated_.

“Sophia?” Taylor tried again, more timidly, her voice catching in the back of her throat. “I’m, uhm. Sorry.”

“For what?” She didn’t intend for it to come out dismissive, laced thick with spite, but the words _do_ , spat out like loose teeth.

Taylor flinched, a sharp jerk of movement that brought both of her arms back in, hugging herself tight. Something in her collapsed, crumbled, the energy - the hate, the antagonism - sputtering out of her. Pain, hurt, all of the things she’d never wanted to see on Taylor’s face flickered into place, only stopped when, with a harsh jerk, she turned on her heel, rushed to leave.

“Wait—wait!”

Taylor halted, stilled. She was still looking away, black hair framing one side of her face, her shoulders shaking with tiny little tremors.

“Fuck—I’m, just, sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.” She hadn’t either, that wasn’t a lie. It was a literal question, despite the anger, the tone, the dismissiveness, what the _fuck_ would Taylor have to apologize for, anyway? Getting hit by a dickhead with an ego? Getting blindsided by someone outside of her weight class? That was the reality of being a cape, you had to roll with the punches because some people could punch through your _fucking_ chest. “I was being literal,” she rushed to clarify, again, because her thoughts were a mess, _she_ was a fucking mess. “You have nothing to apologize for, not to me, not to anyone, especially not to _Dennis_.”

Taylor’s throat bobbed, a slow swallow. Her head turned back, eyes rimmed red, face still crumpled, tucked in on itself, looking wounded and hurt but much less driven to panic, less raw than it had been when the words had fallen out of her mouth like a fucking idiot. “I still fucked up,” she croaked in response, voice a rasp, almost like she’d been crying. “I couldn’t take him down, I... panicked. I got hit, I wasn’t even allowed to _talk_.”

That brought Sophia up short. “Talk about what?”

Taylor shrugged, this time with more energy in it. Her shoulders went up high, a sharp gesture that brought a wince to her face, her arms tightening back around her stomach in protest. “I—I wanted to explain the things he said to me, the way he attacked me.” She went quiet, clenching her eyes shut. “But I didn’t even get to debrief.”

Fucking _Piggot_. For fucks sake. “You normally will, I think she just wanted us out of the room because we kept arguing.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Taylor muttered harshly, one arm pulling away from her stomach to rub at her eyes.

“Of course it fucking does,” she blurted without thinking _again_ because today was apparently just one of those fucking days, but at least this time around all it did was make Taylor stare at her dumbfounded, like she hadn’t expected it. Fuck it, she was going to roll with it. “Your opinion does matter, fuck Piggy, fuck Dennis, fuck Chariot. Of course your opinion matters, jesus christ Taylor.”

Taylor worked her mouth open, shut it with a click.

“I—just, know that, okay?” Why was she getting cold fucking feet _now_? Fuck everything about today. “Today has sucked, tomorrow probably won't, but today really fucking has. Just know that I fucking care, that I actually give a fuck, that so does Emma and your weird as shit dad and your really kinda intimidating mother and—”

“Thank you,” Taylor interrupted, voice low, quiet. She wasn’t staring at her anymore, but rather at her feet, and just beyond the curly mess of hair curtaining her face the tops of her cheekbones were flushed pink. Sophia tried not to focus on that, glancing back up, glaring daggers at a particularly fat pigeon.

Goddamn, she was not fucking equipped for this. She was still riled up from Dennis, still bristling, still ready to hurt and she couldn’t be constructive for one fucking second in her life without tearing someone down. Fucking _shit_.

She heard Taylor approach, shuffling footsteps across the pavement, the unsteady scuff of her heel against concrete. For a moment, she said nothing, did nothing but stand close enough that Sophia could _almost_ feel the heat radiating off her, feel her presence in a way that she knew probably wasn’t wholly real.

“Can I hug you?” Taylor asked, voice still timid, but significantly less hurt, less wobbly.

Sophia breathed out, watched her breath turn to fog then back to nothing. “Yeah,” she murmured, because a hug was nice, physical touch when consenting to calmed her, grounded her. It was why Gumbo was so effective, why she’d been unable to let him go even despite him ageing well out of the therapy dog range.

Careful arms wrapped themselves around her chest, tightening down. Sophia brought her arms up much the same, tucked them into Taylor’s ribcage, drew her in closer. She was warmer than her, not by a lot, but by some, a small little heat generator tucked into her front, winter-chilled nose pressing into the space just above her collarbone. Her hair smelled like peaches and mangos, and was soft when it brushed against her face in a shaggy mass of curls. It was a recognizable presence, physical intimacy from Taylor was rare but she’d started to become familiar with the layout of her body, where bones and muscles bit into her own, not quite pain, but still more sharp than Emma was.

She tightened her hug, so did Taylor, and the anger in her chest didn’t feel so thick anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if this feels a bit like filler, I just have to get back into the swing of writing. Anyway, as you can tell, I'm back, I hope you enjoyed, etc. Updates coming on Wednesday and Friday, hopefully.


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